SOCIAL  IDEALS 

OF 

A  FREE  CHURCH 


EDITED  BY 

ELMER  SEVERANCE  FORBES 


BOSTON 

AMERICAN  UNITARIAN  ASSOCIATION 
1913 


INTRODUCTION 

This  volume  contains  a  number  of  the  papers 
and  addresses  delivered  at  a  Conference  held  in 
Boston  under  the  auspices  of  the  Department  of 
Social  and  Public  Service  of  the  American  Uni- 
tarian Association.  The  addresses  have  been  re- 
vised for  this  book  by  their  authors,  but  they 
retain  the  informality  as  well  as  the  freshness  and 
directness  of  extemporaneous  speech.  The  au- 
thority of  the  speakers,  the  timeliness  of  the 
themes,  and  the  value  of  the  papers  created  a  de- 
mand for  their  publication  in  permanent  form,  and 
this  book  is  issued  as  a  response  to  that  call. 

ELMER  S.  FORBES. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  EXPANSION  OF  RELIGION 1 

Francis  G.  Peabody,  D.D. 

THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION  OF  THE  CHURCH  ...      12 
Mrs.  Anna  Garlin  Spencer 

PRACTICAL  SUGGESTIONS  FOR  SERVICE       .      .      .      2(5 
Frederic  Almy 

THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  SOCIAL  UNREST   ...     38 
Samuel  M.  Crothers,  D.D. 

SOCIAL    SERVICE    AGENCIES 50 

Elmer  S.  Forbes 

THE  SOCIAL  SERVICE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION       .     61 
Mrs.  Annie  M.  Chesley 

THE  SOCIAL  SERVICE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION       .     72 
Rev.  Edgar  S.  Wiers 

THE  MORALIZING  OF  BUSINESS 91 

James  O.  Fagan 

A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM 104 

Charles  F.  Dole,  D.D. 

WHAT   SOME   CHURCHES  ARE   DOING      .      .      .   122 
Rev.  P.  R.  Frothingham 

WHAT   SOME   CHURCHES  ARE   DOING      .      .      .   127 
Rev.  Edwin  Alfred  Rumball 


THE  EXPANSION  OF  RELIGION 
FRANCIS  G.  PEABODY,  D.D. 

Plummer  Professor  of  Christian  Morals,  Harvard 
University 

The  series  of  meetings  of  which  this  is  the  first 
is  to  be  held  in  the  name  of  religion  but  in  the  cause 
of  social  service,  and  the  first  thing  for  us  who 
gather  here  to  do  is  to  make  plain  to  ourselves  what 
is  the  relation  between  these  two  supreme  interests 
of  modern  life.  This  is  a  matter  which  is  much 
debated  in  our  day,  and  is  approached  with  very 
different  emotions ;  on  the  one  hand,  with  a  consid- 
erable degree  of  apprehension  and  alarm,  and  on  the 
other,  with  an  extraordinary  quality  of  confidence 
and  sanguine  hope.  What  is  to  happen  to  religion 
in  its  organized  form  when  it  is  reached  by  this  new 
wave  of  enthusiasm  for  social  service?  Are  the 
churches  to  be  turned  into  workshops  ?  Is  worship 
to  be  supplanted  by  work?  Are  sermons  to  be  in- 
distinguishable from  talks  on  current  events  or 
tracts  on  socialism?  Years  ago,  when  the  famous 
Dr.  Putnam  in  Roxbury  had  for  his  assistant  a  man 
whose  distinction  in  other  spheres  has  obscured  his 
beginnings  as  a  minister,  Mr.  John  Graham  Brooks, 
the  younger  man,  urged  that  a  parish-house  be 

erected,  and  it  was  one  of  the  first  of  these  struc- 

1 


tures  attached  to  the  churches  of  this  neighbor- 
hood. Dr.  Putnam,  in  his  sermon  at  the  dedication 
of  this  parish-house,  said  in  his  solemn  and  impres- 
sive way,  "  Be  sure  that  the  path  between  the 
parish-house  and  the  church  remains  well  trod- 
den." Yes,  one  may  ask,  but  trodden  which  way? 
Are  the  footsteps  of  the  time  likely  to  lead  more 
and  more  away  from  the  ancient  meeting-house 
toward  the  center  of  social  activities,  or  is  this 
revival  of  social  action  in  its  time  to  fortify  the  in- 
stincts of  Christian  worship? 

Some  timid  defenders  of  the  faith  are  seriously 
anxious  lest  this  new  wave  of  humane  sentiment 
shall  sweep  away  the  old  landmarks  of  religion,  so 
that  after  them  shall  come  the  deluge.  They  re- 
treat from  these  expressions  of  social  service  lest 
the  sentiment  of  worship  should  be  weakened 
thereby.  In  the  remarkable  book  which  Professor 
Rauschenbusch  has  published  within  a  week,  and 
which  seems  to  me  even  more  noble  than  his  singu- 
larly able  and  forcible  treatise  of  two  years  ago, 
the  author  cites  the  case  of  a  Lutheran  synod  in  one 
of  the  States  of  this  Union,  which  resolved  to  stand 
fast  in  the  old  ways.  "  It  is  not  the  mission  of  the 
Christian  church,"  said  this  resolution,  "  to  abolish 
misery  or  to  help  people  to  earthly  happiness.  The 
mission  of  the  church  is  to  preach  the  gospel.  Let 
it  remember  the  words  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  *  If  any 
man  would  come  after  me,  let  him  take  up  his  cross 
and  follow  me.' '  This  is  as  calm  a  piece  of 
Christian  irony  as  I  ever  heard  perpetrated.  Con- 


fronting  all  the  misery  of  the  world,  these  excellent 
brethren  say,  "  Take  up  your  cross  and  bear  it ;  we 
on  our  part  will  preach  the  gospel !  "  It  may  even 
happen  that  the  very  beauty  of  social  service  may 
create  in  the  minds  of  those  dedicated  to  religion  a 
new  sense  of  alarm,  as  though  the  world  in  some 
way  were  taking  over  the  very  fruits  of  the  spirit 
which  had  once  been  the  property  and  monopoly  of 
the  church.  I  stood  once  in  a  woman's  settlement 
house,  perhaps  the  fairest  flower  of  modern 
philanthropy  which  one  could  name,  and  by  my 
side  stood  a  Christian  minister,  bearing  in  his  attire 
the  marks  of  his  profession ;  and  looking  about  him 
at  the  signs  of  social  sacrifice  and  service  which  he 
saw  on  every  hand,  he  said,  "  This  is  very  beauti- 
ful, but  I  wish  there  were  more  of  Christ  in  it." 
How  could  there  be,  one  might  ask  himself,  more  of 
Christ  than  in  the  self-effacing  ministration  of 
those  devoted  women?  And  might  not  the  Master 
himself  have  passed  by  many  a  temple  bearing  his 
cross  and  coming  into  that  quiet  group  of  servants 
of  his  have  laid  his  hand  upon  them  and  said,  "  In- 
asmuch as  ye  are  doing  it  to  these  least,  ye  are 
doing  it  unto  me  ?  "  The  fact  was  that  it  was  the 
beauty  of  the  spectacle  which  excited  in  the  repre- 
sentative of  Christ  a  pang  of  regret.  He  could 
hardly  bear  to  see  the  flower  of  Christian  service 
blossoming  so  winsomely,  because  it  did  not  bear 
the  tag  of  the  Master's  name. 

That  is  one  aspect  of  the  case.     And  then,  on 
the  other  hand,  this  same  issue  is  greeted  by  many 


4        THE  EXPANSION  OF  RELIGION 

persons  to-day  with  expectant  hope.  They  want 
to  free  philanthropic  and  industrial  service  from 
the  taint  of  a  religious  tradition.  The  revolution- 
ary creed  of  to-day,  though  by  no  means  accepted 
in  its  fullness  by  all  who  follow  it,  has  encouraged 
the  dissociation  of  the  economic  and  social  trans- 
formation believed  to  be  at  hand  from  the  prin- 
ciples and  methods  of  religion.  "  Religion/'  the 
most  distinguished  representative  of  the  German 
Social  Democracy  has  said,  "  will  not  be  abolished 
or  God  dethroned.  No  attack  of  any  kind  need  be 
made  on  religion.  Of  its  own  nature  it  will  dis- 
appear as  the  transcendent  reflection  of  the  exist- 
ing social  order."  In  other  words,  with  the  institu- 
tion of  capitalism  will  necessarily  disappear  all  that 
capitalism  has  brought  forth,  and  together  with 
other  such  outcomes  of  the  capitalistic  system,  the 
prevailing  teaching  of  religion  itself  will  vanish. 
And  in  this  same  volume  of  Professor  Rauschen- 
busch  he  quotes  in  a  footnote  a  letter  from  such 
a  revolutionary  spirit  who  writing  to  him  says, 
"  We  regard  the  so-called  Christian  churches  as 
our  bitterest  enemies,  and  when  anyone  comes  into 
our  party  he  drops  his  religion." 

Here  seems  to  be  a  clear  issue.  Is  it  possible, 
then,  to  meet  in  the  name  of  religion  and  in  the 
cause  of  social  service?  What  is  the  real  relation 
between  these  two?  One's  answer  to  that  question 
must  depend  upon  what  he  holds  religion  itself  to 
be.  What  is  religion,  and  what  is  its  interior  na- 
ture and  significance?  If  religion  means  an  ec- 


THE  EXPANSION  OF  RELIGION        5 

clesiastical  conformity,  or  a  denominational  creed, 
or  a  scheme  of  doctrine,  then  one  must  unquestion- 
ably leave  the  sphere  of  religion  when  he  enters 
the  sphere  of  social  service.  He  comes  out 
of  the  one  as  he  goes  into  the  other.  I  had 
this  situation  illustrated  some  time  ago  by 
a  young  correspondent,  an  unknown  youth 
writing  from  another  college  a  letter  which  pre- 
sumably was  sent  to  many  busy  persons  in  many 
colleges.  I  gathered  that  he  was  preparing  some 
college  task,  a  debate,  perhaps,  or  a  thesis,  or 
what  in  college  life  with  playful  imagination  is 
sometimes  called  an  "original  research,"  in  the 
course  of  which  he  wrote  to  many  busy  people, 
received  replies  from  a  certain  proportion  of  them, 
tabulated  the  result,  and  presented  it  under  the 
title  of  his  own  work,  when  it  is  really  the  work 
of  his  victims.  This  young  man  propounded  to 
me,  as  he  no  doubt  had  to  many  other  persons,  this 
question :  "  How  many  Christians  in  Harvard 
University  go  into  athletics?  "  Did  he  mean  to 
ask  how  many  young  men  play  their  games  loyally, 
honorably,  zealously,  so  that  Jesus  Christ,  looking 
on  them  as  he  once  looked  on  one  such  luxuriously- 
bred  young  man,  would  love  them?  Oh,  no!  The 
further  contents  of  his  letter  indicated  that  he  was 
thinking  of  a  technical  theological,  ecclesiastical 
test:  how  many  young  men,  having  gone  into 
that  kind  of  religious  confession,  proceeded,  as  it 
were,  to  come  out  of  that  and  go  into  something 
else,  namely,  athletics?  It  was  as  if  the  religious 


life  lay  in  one  compartment  and  athletic  life  in 
another,  and  one  came  out  of  one  and  went  into 
the  other,  as  though  life  were  a  compartment  train 
where  one  might  sleep  in  one  car  and  then  step 
across  a  somewhat  unstable  platform  and  eat  in  an- 
other. This  young  man  had  forgotten  that  ac- 
cording to  the  doctrine  of  the  New  Testament  one 
does  not  have  to  come  out  of  his  religion  to  go  into 
his  athletics,  but  that  on  the  contrary  the  Christian 
life  is  athletic  in  its  very  nature  and  meaning,  and 
that  when  the  apostle  Paul  tried  to  describe  the 
Christian  life  to  his  disciples,  he  used  as  most  ap- 
propriate the  language  of  athletics :  "  I  keep  my 
body  under ; "  "  So  fight  I  not  as  one  that  beateth 
the  air ; "  "  So  run  that  ye  may  obtain ;  "  "  All 
run  and  one  receiveth  the  prize."  The  Christian 
life  in  itself  is  an  athletic  exercise,  and  the  cause 
of  Christ  demands  of  one  his  body  with  the  heart, 
the  muscle  as  well  as  the  mind. 

Such  is  the  technical  definition  of  the  religious 
life,  which  has  taken  such  a  hold  of  the  Christian 
church  that  it  is  preached  and  taught  throughout 
the  world  as  of  the  essence  of  faith.  And,  all  the 
while,  what  is  religion?  If  religion  be  the  con- 
secration of  the  personal  will  to  the  living  God, 
if  it  be  the  dedication  of  one's  whole  life  — 
body,  mind  and  will  —  to  the  eternal  law,  then 
where  and  how  does  that  consecration  occur,  and 
in  what  atmosphere  and  environment  can  the  soul 
thus  live?  Not  in  a  vacuum,  not  alone,  not  in  the 
salvation  of  one's  own  separate  soul.  In  one  of  the 


THE  EXPANSION  OF  RELIGION        7 

greatest  sayings  of  John  Wesley,  he  made  this  af- 
firmation :  "  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  solitary 
Christian."  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  soul  saved 
alone.  When  Mazzini  was  asked  whether  a  man 
was  good,  he  said,  "  How  can  you  call  that  man 
good?  Whom  has  he  saved?  "  Religion  becomes 
thus  a  social  fact.  We  are  members  one  of  an- 
other, and  no  one  can  thus  detach  himself  from  the 
social  order  and  live  or  die  to  himself.  That  is  the 
doctrine  of  Paul  about  the  Christian  church,  and 
that  great  truth  of  membership  one  with  another, 
and  of  the  one  body  in  Christ,  has  had  in  our  day 
a  vast  expansion  until  it  comprehends  the  whole 
social  order  in  which  it  is  our  privilege  to  live. 
The  religious  life  remains,  as  it  always  has  re- 
mained, an  individual  concern.  The  soul  of  the 
person  is  the  center  of  religion.  But  the  center 
of  what?  Can  you  have  a  center  without  a 
circumference?  Can  you  have,  not  only  a 
self-centered  life,  but  a  self -surrounded  life? 
Must  not  the  individual  redemption  occur  in 
and  through  the  service  of  the  organic  whole? 
This  is  the  great  truth  which  the  present  gen- 
seration  is  learning  and  is  destined  more  and  more 
to  learn,  and  which  I  have  ventured  to  call  "  the 
expansion  of  religion."  The  central  facts  of 
the  religious  life  remain  the  same,  but  the  circle, 
ithe  environment,  the  atmosphere  in  which  religion 
is  to  fulfill  itself,  expands  with  the  new  world ;  and 
the  problem  of  redemption  becomes  no  longer  that 
of  saving  the  individual  out  of  a  lost  world,  like 


8        THE  EXPANSION  OF  RELIGION 

a  rat  running  from  a  sinking  ship,  but  the  more 
heroic  task  of  setting  the  individual  to  save  the 
world  and  to  bring  it  with  all  its  cargo  of  hopes 
and  fears  safe  at  last  to  port. 

That  is  the  expansion  of  religion  which  meets 
us  here.  And  it  confronts  us  with  the  alarming 
possibility  that  those  who  have  at  their  hands  the 
power  of  the  religious  life  have  not  begun  to 
realize  what  that  power  implies  or  half  used  the 
force  which  is  committed  to  them.  Years  ago  Dr. 
Bartol  heard  someone  say  that  the  Christian 
church  was  outgrown,  to  which  the  old  saint  re- 
plied, "  Outgrown  ?  It  has  not  yet  been  fairly 
tried." 

The  expansion  of  religion  opens  the  way  to  a 
real  trial  of  it  in  the  new  form  of  social  service. 
In  this  relationship  we  have  not  to  do  with  two 
things  but  one, —  not  with  service  as  a  by-product 
or  corollary  of  religious  faith,  but  as  an  utterance, 
an  expression,  a  contemporaneous  confession  of 
genuine  religious  life. 

The  moment  you  look  at  any  aspect  of  present- 
day  religion  you  will  see  how  this  is  working  out. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  problem  of  Christian  mis- 
sions. Generations  ago  we  learned  that  no  religion 
could  anticipate  growing  at  home  if  it  did  not  grow 
away  from  home,  that  the  missionary  motive  was 
the  very  heart-blood  of  a  vital  religious  life.  But 
how  restricted,  how  technical,  how  shut-in,  have 
been  the  methods  of  missionary  action !  To  save 
the  heathen  from  his  final  doom,  to  preach  the 


THE  EXPANSION  OF  RELIGION        9 

creed  of  a  new  faith,  to  multiply  the  number  of 
believers  in  a  specific  communion  —  how  limited  the 
purpose,  and,  it  must  be  added  in  many  cases  — 
how  meager  the  results !  And  then  a  new  time 
comes  for  the  expansion  of  religion,  and  a  new 
conception  of  Christian  missions  takes  possession 
of  the  world ;  for  the  Christian  missionary  brings 
not  only  a  creed,  a  dogma,  a  ritual,  but  is  the 
apostle  of  education,  of  the  healing  art,  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  hospital,  of  the  kindergarten,  of 
all  the  instruments  and  agents  of  a  Christian  civil- 
ization; and  with  that  the  missionary  work  itself 
takes  on  new  vitality  and  hope. 

I  was  talking  once  at  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
centers  of  foreign  missionary  work  with  the  de- 
voted men  and  women  there  and  observing  their 
many  works  of  education,  medical  science  and 
philanthropic  service,  and  I  said  to  one  of  these 
missionaries,  "  I  am  afraid  that  what  you  are  doing 
here  is  not  precisely  what  you  are  paid  to  do  by 
the  friends  at  home,"  and  she  answered :  "  No,  we 
probably  could  not  get  the  money  at  home  for 
real  missionary  work."  She  had  caught  a  glimpse 
of  the  expansion  of  the  mission  field,  and  to-day, 
in  many  parts  of  the  globe,  the  missionaries,  taught 
by  the  very  nature  of  their  own  task,  are  doing 
larger  things  than  their  supporters  at  home  pay 
them  to  do,  or,  I  had  almost  said,  desire  them 
to  do. 

The  same  thing  is  true  about  the  Christian 
ministry.  We  hear  very  much  in  our  day  about 


10      THE  EXPANSION  OF  RELIGION 

the  decline  of  the  ministry,  and  the  difficulty  of 
procuring  men  for  the  service  of  the  churches. 
But  is  the  ministry  declining?  That  will  depend 
a  good  deal  on  what  a  minister  of  Jesus  Christ  is. 
Is  the  ministry  of  Christ  wholly  a  talking  pro- 
fession? Shall  the  representative  of  Jesus  Christ 
in  the  modern  world  be  known  by  what  he  says, 
or  does  the  modern  ministry  comprehend  within 
itself  those  humble  servants  of  social  need,  who 
go  their  way  up  and  down  without  much  speech  or 
language,  doing  the  deeds  of  the  Master?  He 
came  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister ;  he 
came  to  give  his  life  a  ransom  for  many,  and 
wherever  that  task  is  done  there  is  the  expansion 
of  the  Christian  ministry  itself.  I  often  have 
young  men  come  to  me  to  ask  whether  I  should 
advise  them  to  enter  the  Christian  ministry  or  the 
career  of  social  service,  and  my  answer  must  be 
this :  "  There  is  no  choice.  These  are  not  two 
things,  but  one.  The  same  motives  are  imperative ; 
the  same  rewards  are  before  you;  the  same  spirit 
guides  your  task.  Some  must  speak  the  word  of 
prophets,  and  some  must  do  the  self-effacing  serv- 
ice of  others'  needs,  but  they  are  not  two  tasks; 
they  are  one.'*  Thus  the  Christian  ministry  to-day 
is  not  understocked,  but  richly  supplied.  The  ex- 
pansion of  religion  gathers  up  into  itself  this  great 
company  of  witnesses,  so  that  the  profession  of 
those  who  want  to  do  the  will,  though  they  may  not 
name  the  name,  was  never  more  adequately 
supplied. 


THE  EXPANSION  OF  RELIGION      11 

Something  has  been  said  of  the  relation  of  Wil- 
liam Ellery  Channing  to  our  theme.  As  I  look  at 
his  picture,  and  as  we  meet  here  in  the  hall  that 
bears  his  name,  this  is  certainly  a  most  happy 
reminiscence.  The  work  of  Channing  is  his- 
torically related  to  the  progress  of  theology,  but 
his  relation  to  the  theological  thought  has  some- 
what obscured  the  extraordinary  contribution  of 
Channing  to  the  science  of  social  service.  No 
words  are  more  modern,  more  contemporaneous  to- 
day, than  his  concerning  pauperism  and  poverty, 
drink  and  crime,  war  and  peace.  But  these  two 
things  in  him  were  one,  and  he  would  have  looked 
with  a  generous  and  sanctifying  welcome  upon  a 
gathering  like  this,  in  the  name  of  religion  and 
in  the  cause  of  a  wise  social  service.  I  congratu- 
late you,  friends,  on  this  unity  of  the  spirit.  The 
social  servant,  humbly  doing  the  insignificant  task 
committed  to  his  hands,  may  look  up  to  the  Master 
of  the  religious  life,  and  repeat  his  great  words, 
"  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  unto  one  of  the  least,  ye 
have  done  it  unto  me,"  and  may  quietly  and  pa- 
tiently answer  to  the  call  of  God,  "  Here  am  I ; 
send  me." 


THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION  OF  THE  CHURCH 
MRS.  ANNA  GARLIN  SPENCER 

Associate  Director,  New  York  School  of  Philan- 
thropy 

The  social  function  of  the  church  in  a  gathering 
like  this  means  the  social  function  of  the  churches. 
We  have  no  central,  dominating,  controlling  church 
influence  that  directs  activities.  In  our  church 
life  we  are  the  closest,  most  intimate  group  next 
to  the  family.  The  social  function  of  the 
churches,  then,  is  an  intimate  relationship  which 
the  members  of  a  given  church  have  to  the  social 
problems  and  the  social  service  to  which  they  are 
most  closely  related. 

The  social  function  of  the  church  as  a  distinc- 
tive institution  seems  to  me  to  be  a  difficult  one  to 
outline.  Where  does  the  church  —  any  church  — 
connect  with  the  regimented  social  movement?  I 
do  not  mean,  where  do  the  churches  most  catch  on? 
For  they  are  doing  it  wherever  their  training  and 
their  special  interests  lie.  I  mean  where  should  the 
church  as  an  institution  connect  with  this  more  and 
more  highly  specialized,  more  and  more  expertly 
directed,  enginery  of  social  change?  Remember 
that  the  center  of  gravity  in  philanthropic  work 

has  changed  from  the  old  emphasis  upon  ameliora- 

12 


THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION  13 

tive  charitable  relief  through  personal  ministry  to 
the  individual,  to  a  great  movement  to  abolish 
poverty,  to  abolish  preventable  diseases,  to  change 
the  environment  of  human  beings  in  order  that  they 
may  live  nobler  and  wiser  and  happier  lives.  We 
have  entered  upon  the  greatest  spiritual  adventure 
in  practical  affairs  that  the  world  has  ever  wit- 
nessed. We  learned  first  that  man  was  shaped  by 
his  environment,  and  now  we  are  learning  that  man 
can  reshape  his  environment  in  order  that  he  may 
reshape  himself  and  his  kind  in  lines  and  directions 
that  seem  to  him  desirable.  And  we  are  now  en- 
gaged upon  this  tremendous  task  of  changing  the 
conditions  that  surround  the  majority  of  human 
beings.  Let  no  one  fail  to  understand  that  that 
is  what  we  are  actually  attempting.  Whether  we 
see  it  or  not,  that  is  the  great  spiritual  adventure 
in  practical  affairs  upon  which  the  human  race  has 
entered. 

Now  where  can  a  church  best  join  in  this  regi- 
mented attack  upon  old  injustices,  upon  outworn 
conditions,  upon  needless  and  hurtful  accidents 
of  life?  Here  I  must  repeat  what  I  have  often 
said,  that  I  have  no  use  for  a  church  which  exists 
only  to  do  what  is  called  social  work.  Deeply  and 
devoutly  interested  as  I  am  in,  and  thankful  as 
we  all  should  be  for,  this  great  movement  towards 
environmental  change,  yet  if  any  church  exists 
chiefly  even  to  furnish  individuals  for  that  par- 
ticular form  of  endeavor,  I  believe  it  is  hanging  on 
to  an  old  organization  to  do  a  piece  of  work  which 


U  THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION 

it  could  do  much  more  effectively  by  dividing  up 
its  workers  and  apportioning  them  among  the  great 
civic  social  movements.  The  church  exists  pri- 
marily, as  it  always  has  existed,  to  make  an  appeal 
to  the  individual  life,  to  try  to  develop  person- 
alities that  will  be  superior  to  their  environment, 
that  will  react  as  individuals  upon  the  conditions 
in  which  they  find  themselves  without  waiting  for 
the  great  social  changes.  Given  that,  where  shall 
the  church  which  holds  true  to  its  main  purpose,  and 
at  the  same  time  has  become  socialized  in  its  desire 
to  be  at  one  with  the  great  forces  which  are  chang- 
ing things  for  the  benefit  of  the  whole,  come  in  most 
helpfully? 

I  like  to  give  as  an  example  of  how  a  generation 
has  changed  the  emphasis  of  the  church,  my  ex- 
perience with  my  own  little  daughter  in  trying  to 
interest  her  in  Bunyan's  "  Pilgrim's  Progress." 
When  she  was  about  eight  or  nine  years  old,  I 
thought  it  was  time  for  her  to  be  interested  in  that 
book,  as  I  had  been  at  her  age,  and  started  to  read 
it  aloud.  I  had  only  gone  a  very  little  way  when 
with  a  flash  of  her  eye  and  a  toss  of  her  head  she 
said :  "  Mother,  don't  read  any  more  about  that 
man  Christian.  I  don't  like  him ;  he  was  a  selfish 
pig  to  run  away  from  the  people  that  were  burning 
up !  Why  didn't  he  stay  and  help  them  ?  "  And 
I  realized  at  once  that  within  a  generation  the 
whole  center  of  gravity  of  religion  as  well  as  of 
charity  had  changed ;  that  it  is  not  concern  about 
your  own  soul  but  about  saving  the  other  people 


THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION  15 

who  are  in  danger  that  to-day  moves  us  all.  The 
churches,  not  the  Unitarian  churches  alone  but  all 
churches,  are  full  of  that  spirit  of  staying  in  the 
burning  city  till  every  soul  is  saved,  rather  than 
of  fleeing  for  their  own  advantage.  Whatever 
their  creed  may  say,  however  inconsistent  their 
theories  may  be  with  their  practice  and  their  present 
work,  that  is  the  temper  of  the  Christian  churches 
to-day.  That  is  the  temper  of  all  the  progressive 
churches  of  the  world,  whether  Christian  or  not. 

For  twenty  years  and  more  I  have  been  trying 
with  the  best  of  my  endeavor  to  see  in  what  specific 
and  distinctive  ways  the  social  function  of  churches 
may  best  develop.  We  are  all  agreed  that  the  great 
dynamo,  the  great  power-house  for  social  service, 
still  remains  the  church  —  Christian,  Jewish,  what- 
ever it  may  be.  When  we  want  to  do  a  new  thing 
or  do  better  an  old  thing  for  humanity  we  still 
go  to  the  church  members,  to  those  who  have 
gained  an  idea  of  the  sacredness  of  life  and  the 
spirit  of  consecration.  Now,  then,  how  shall  we 
introduce  the  social  motive  into  the  practical  work 
of  churches  so  as  to  satisfy  the  young  people  who 
are  not  very  much  concerned  about  either  home 
or  foreign  missions,  but  who  are  mightily  in  earnest 
to  do  their  part  in  this  great  work  of  changing  the 
conditions  of  the  world? 

In  my  judgment  this  practical  expression  of  the 
social  spirit  is  very  necessary,  especially  since  I 
believe  that  Protestantism,  except  among  the 
Friends  and  a  few  smaller  sects,  has  never  done  its 


16 

social  duty  by  its  own  members.  It  ought  to  take 
much  better  care  of  its  own  people,  and  of  those 
who  might  be  its  own  people  if  the  church  were  as 
hospitable  as  it  should  be.  A  thousand  things  are 
needed  to  socialize  the  world  and  to  ease  the  awful 
economic  burden,  not  necessarily  by  going  down  to 
the  bottom  of  things,  but  by  easing  off  the  pressure 
on  the  middle  class,  letting  them  rise  a  little  and 
so  giving  room  for  the  people  below  to  go  up. 

You  know  what  happens  when  a  model  tenement 
is  built.  It  is  not  the  people  who  lived  in  the  old 
rookeries  that  go  into  it,  it  is  the  people  who  have 
been  paying  more  rent  than  they  could  afford,  and 
who  are  glad  enough  to  get  a  decent  place  to  live 
in  at  a  reasonable  cost.  There  are  never  enough 
old  people's  homes  of  the  right  kind,  nor  enough 
agencies  for  the  care  of  those  who  have  broken 
down  and  are  convalescent ;  there  are  never  enough 
ways  by  which  we  can  help  talented  boys  and  girls 
to  reach  the  careers  for  which  they  are  fitted  by 
nature,  never  enough  ways  by  which  we  can  lighten 
the  burden  of  the  people  who  are  not  affected  in 
large  ways  by  what  we  call  social  work  except  to 
have  their  lives  made  harder.  For  example,  you 
have  to  be  well  to  do  or  very  poor  to  have  a  trained 
nurse.  You  have  to  be  the  kind  of  person  who  is 
willing  your  child  should  be  herded  with  strangers 
and  farmed  out  for  a  "  country  week  "  in  a  place 
you  have  never  seen,  or  else  have  money  to  pay  for 
his  care  in  an  expensive  summer  camp,  or  your 
child  must  stay  at  home  in  the  city.  I  know,  for 


THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION  17 

. 

I  have  seen,  that  the  worst  cases  of  anaemia  and 
lack  of  all  things  that  go  to  make  a  child  strong 
and  healthy  and  happy  are  among  the  people  who 
are  not  willing  to  send  their  children  with  a  crowd, 
to  be  interviewed  by  reporters  as  they  start,  and 
yet  who  cannot  afford  either  to  go  themselves  to 
the  country  or  send  their  children  under  the  right 
chaperonage. 

I  believe  the  Quakers  are  unique  among  Christian 
churches  in  the  way  in  which  they  care  for  the 
wayward  child,  the  aged  person  and  all  the  human 
relationships  where  need  calls  for  kindness.  Since 
the  church  is  no  longer  responsible  for  public  edu- 
cation or  public  charity  or  any  of  those  things  that 
Latin  Christianity  took  care  of,  and  as  the  church 
breaks  up  into  churches  and  the  relationship  be- 
comes so  close  and  intimate,  why  should  not  the 
churches  extend  this  family  care  to  all  their  mem- 
bers? I  mean  something  even  more  radical  than 
this.  I  do  not  know  any  reason  in  nature  why  the 
lodge,  the  benevolent  orders,  the  fraternal  insur- 
ance bodies,  should  all  have  sprung  up  outside  the 
church.  What  more  natural  than  that  in  the 
Christian  church  which  began  with  "  all  things  in 
common,"  there  should  have  been  an  ingenious  and 
a  constant  and  a  growing  use  of  the  cooperative 
side  of  life?  For  instance,  we  in  this  country  are 
struggling  toward  Lloyd  George's  England,  and 
there  they  have  a  great  national  insurance  scheme. 
You  cannot  earn  more  than  $800  a  year  and  be 
eligible  to  its  benefits ;  but  there  are  a  great  many 


18  THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION 

people  who  earn  just  a  little  over  $800  to  whom 
insurance  of  a  different  kind,  such  as  that  provided 
by  the  fraternal  benevolent  insurance  orders,  would 
be  most  helpful. 

Another  thing;  we  are  all  worried  over  the  high 
cost  of  living,  and  in  every  program  of  any  church 
that  has  a  forum,  I  find  much  talk  about  it.  Why 
should  not  the  women  and  the  church  get  together 
and  form  a  housewives'  league,  purchase  supplies 
in  bulk  and  use  one  of  the  vestry  rooms  that  are 
so  painfully  vacant  all  through  the  week  for  a 
distributing  place? 

Then  why  not  do  something  to  save  the  babies? 
We  have  learned  at  last  that  it  is  as  pious  an  act 
to  give  the  baby  its  right  food  and  keep  it  alive 
as  it  is  to  hold  service  over  its  remains  and  to  bury 
it  when  it  is  dead.  Now,  why  should  we  not  put  the 
church  at  work  to  save  the  babies,  and,  too,  not 
merely  the  babies  of  the  slums?  A  great  many 
babies  die  who  should  not,  who  do  not  die  in  the 
slums,  and  a  great  many  mothers  are  overworking 
and  need  care  and  help  who  do  not  live  in  tene- 
ments. I  believe  if  the  church  would  grow  a  little 
more  ingenious  and  would  understand  the  full  sig- 
nificance of  its  theoretical  adoption  of  religion  as 
a  practical  working-out  of  the  conduct  of  life  here 
in  this  world  instead  of  in  the  world  to  come,  that 
we  should  have  any  number  of  points  of  contact 
within  the  church  for  the  practical  advantage  of 
human  beings,  and  all  of  them  baptized  with  the 
fire  and  the  glory  of  religious  aspiration.  If  there 


THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION  19 

is  anything  on  earth  that  is  needed  it  is  such  a 
baptism  of  social  effort,  which  to-day  is  so  satu- 
rated with  materialistic  ideas  and  arguments  that 
it  must  be  attached  to  the  church  or  to  something 
that  has  wings  to  know  that  it  also  can  fly. 

Then  again  it  seems  to  me  that  we  have  another 
clear  duty  in  churches,  and  that  is  to  accept  the 
idea  of  the  social  expansion  of  religion ;  to  accept 
it  not  merely  as  a  beautiful  theory,  not  merely  as 
binding  us  all  together  in  sympathy  in  union  meet- 
ings and  institutes,  but  as  something  to  be  trans- 
lated into  terms  of  personal  pledge.  I  believe 
membership  in  any  Christian  church  or  Jewish 
synagogue  in  this  day  and  age  should  mean  that 
every  human  being  who  joins  should  pledge  him- 
self to  some  sort  of  definite  service.  Indefinite 
pledges  do  not  amount  to  anything.  What  is  a 
church's  duty?  It  is  to  find  out  what  needs  to 
be  done  right  at  its  own  doors,  in  its  own  com- 
munity, in  its  own  neighborhood,  and  to  learn  that 
not  by  hearsay  but  by  actual  investigation.  Every 
church  should  have  some  one  employed  by  it,  or 
belonging  to  it,  who  will  find  out  what  conditions 
are  and  will  set  them  down  in  accurate  statement. 
If  the  church  is  so  situated  that  it  can  have  a 
social  exhibit  and  is  strong  enough  to  get  it  up, 
that  is  a  very  good  work ;  and  if  the  church  only 
would  undertake  it  I  think  we  could  be  saved 
some  horrible  exhibits  which  are  wholly  patholog- 
ical and  which  do  not  place  the  normal  where  it 
belongs  —  in  the  center  of  things.  Some  of  us 


20  THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION 

in  New  York  worked  and  worked  in  vain  before  the 
Child  Welfare  Exhibit  to  get  even  a  few  pictures 
that  showed  the  normal  child.  Everything  was 
pathological.  The  worst  tenement,  and  the  most 
dreadful-looking  infant,  and  the  most  horrible  con- 
ditions were  hunted  out  and  photographed.  I  my- 
self saw  some  children  from  the  tenements  coming 
and  finding  their  pictures  and  pluming  themselves 
upon  being  in  the  worst  and  most  awful  picture 
there  was  in  the  whole  exhibit. 

That  is  not  what  a  church  should  do,  least  of 
all  a  Unitarian  church,  but  an  exhibit  that  com- 
bined some  of  the  effusion  of  that  faith  in  human 
nature  and  that  emphasis  upon  the  divine  in  human 
life  that  the  Unitarian  body  could  so  well  give, 
would  be  a  more  normal  showing  of  actual  life. 

Then,  having  found  out  what  there  is  to  be 
done,  I  believe  in  the  card  catalogue  system  ap- 
plied to  the  church  as  an  indication  of  its  working 
force.  Every  member  of  a  church  and  every  per- 
son who  wishes  to  feel  in  alignment  with  the 
church,  whether  he  wants  to  join  it  or  not,  should 
have  the  privilege  presented  and  pressed  upon 
him  of  indicating  on  a  card  prepared  for  the 
purpose  the  definite  service  which  he  is  willing  to 
render.  For  example,  "  I,  A.  B.,  member  of  so 
and  so,  enlist  for  next  year  as  a  friendly  visitor ; " 
" I,  A.  B.,  enlist  for  recreation  work ; "  "I  will  be 
a  solicitor ;  "  "I  will  take  care  of  a  neighbor ; " 
"  I  will  spend  an  hour  with  one  of  the  women  in 
my  own  church  who  never  has  a  chance  to  go  to 


THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION  21 

service  " —  and  all  the  other  things  we  now  call 
social  service.  I  believe  the  only  way  we  can  prove 
that  the  church  is  socialized  is  by  every  member 
in  it  being  pledged  to  service,  PLEDGED  TO 
SERVICE.  I  mean  every  one  of  those  words,  with 
three  dark  lines  underneath  them.  We  all  go  into 
our  various  religious  bodies  with  a  desire  to  be  of 
service,  of  course,  but  the  old  service  was  going 
to  prayer-meeting,  being  sure  to  be  there  rain  or 
shine,  contributing  to  home  missions  and  foreign 
missions  and  doing  the  small  amount  of  charitable 
work  that  then  was  demanded.  Now,  it  is  this 
great  congeries  of  social  appeals  and  motives  and 
ideals  and  efforts  that  calls  us  and  the  question 
is  where  shall  we  place  our  members? 

Very  few  churches  can  say,  "  We  select  the  fight 
against  tuberculosis  for  our  work,  and  all  of  our 
people  will  work  against  tuberculosis !  "  or  "  We 
select  tenement-house  reform,  and  all  our  people 
will  work  for  better  housing,"  and  so  on.  The 
church,  like  the  family,  is  composed  of  different 
kinds  of  people  with  different  interests,  and  each 
church  will  help  in  many  ways.  Therefore,  let 
our  card  be  kept  up  to  date;  don't  let  it  fall 
behind.  Every  year  we  must  ask,  "  For  what 
specific  cause  will  you  enlist  to  give  half  an  hour 
a  week  or  an  hour  a  week  or  a  day  a  week,  or 
whatever  time  you  can  give?  "  Some  of  the  peo- 
ple would  give  almost  all  their  time  because  they 
are  free  from  other  obligations,  and  altogether 
the  amount  of  service  we  should  have  to  pass  out 


22  THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION 

directly  and  definitely  from  the  church  center  to 
various  agencies  in  the  community  would  be  sur- 
prising to  any  of  us.  There  are  a  few  churches 
which  are  trying  something  along  that  line,  and 
I  believe  it  is  the  most  saving  and  helpful  thing 
that  can  be  undertaken. 

But  this  is  what  any  church  can  do.  Is  there  any- 
thing that  Unitarian  churches  might  do  that  other 
churches  cannot?  If  brave  enough  and  earnest 
enough,  the  liberal  bodies  could  start  new  things 
without  waiting  for  great  endowments,  without  de- 
pending upon  philanthropic  trusts.  They  could 
think  over  the  whole  situation,  could  study  it 
carefully,  and  wherever  they  found  a  vacant  place, 
a  missing  link,  or  something  more  radical,  more 
advanced  than  others  were  doing,  there  they  could 
exert  their  influence.  I  believe  there  is  no  kind 
of  social  work  that  is  in  any  way  uncongenial  to 
a  religious  body  and  not  perfectly  proper  for  a 
religious  body  to  undertake.  But  most  social 
services  that  the  churches  undertake,  as,  for  in- 
stance, the  free  kindergarten  in  the  early  days, 
should  be  undertaken  as  object  lessons  and  their 
mission  should  be  quite  free.  They  should  demon- 
strate something  that  ought  to  be  done  and  then 
let  go  of  it  whenever  the  civic  interests  in  the 
community  life  are  ready  to  take  it  up.  That 
would  keep  the  freshness  and  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
people. 

It  seems  to  me  that  we  have  not  yet  accepted 
clearly  in  our  consciousness  the  bearing,  meaning, 


THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION  23 

significance  of  this  socializing  of  religion.  We 
have  been  too  afraid  of  undertaking  small  prac- 
tical efforts,  as  if  they  did  not  belong  to  the  great 
range  of  vision  and  the  individual  grasp  of  the 
progressive  faith.  I  think  they  do.  I  think  that 
the  genius  of  the  Unitarian  body  is  preeminently 
practical.  The  only  thing  is,  we  have  not  method- 
ized our  spirit.  And  I  believe  that  while  we  should 
never  be  slaves  of  method,  we  should  never  fail  to 
get  that  mechanism  which  best  suits  the  need  and 
will  best  accomplish  the  work.  Therefore,  my  ap- 
peal would  be  that  every  church  should  set  about 
the  study  of  what  actually  constitutes  the  work 
needing  to  be  done;  secondly,  take  account  of 
stock,  see  how  many  people  there  are  who  will  work ; 
and  then  make  it  easy  for  every  human  being  to 
choose  a  congenial  field  in  which  he  or  she  can  be 
more  efficient,  perhaps,  than  in  any  other. 

Lastly,  do  not  be  afraid  of  doing  new  things. 
To  that  end  every  liberal  church  should  have  what 
almost  every  Orthodox  church  is  beginning  to  have, 
a  free  platform  and  an  open  forum ;  a  place  where 
people  who  are  engaging  in  new  enterprises  may 
come  and  tell  what  they  are  about.  It  does  not 
mean  that  you  will  always  follow  every  lecturer, 
if  you  did  the  church  would  be  an  attachment  to 
a  moving  van  and  it  would  be  going  from  one 
point  to  another  all  the  time,  but  it  does  a  great 
deal  of  good  to  have  the  church  considered  as  a 
moral  and  social  exposition.  Every  week,  every 
month  at  least,  some  new  thought  should  be  pre- 


24  THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION 

sented,  and  no  one  should  be  afraid  of  hearing  the 
most  radical  thought.  All  that  we  should  be 
afraid  of  is  making  up  our  minds  too  hastily, 
having  insufficient  bases  for  our  decisions.  An 
open  forum  does  not  tend  toward  scatter-brained, 
loose  enthusiasm,  but  it  simulates  deep  and  radical 
thinking  on  great  questions,  so  that  the  people  who 
are  pledged  to  special  service  in  one  field  are  lov- 
ingly compelled  to  hear  about  every  other  field, 
that  they  may  not  become  narrow-minded. 

Finally,  many  young  people  are  coming  into 
our  schools  of  philanthropy  who  thirty  or  twenty 
years  ago  would  have  entered  the  Christian  min- 
istry, and  it  has  been  a  choice  to  them  of  practical 
alignment,  even  though  the  spirit  may  be  the  same. 
A  young  man  came  to  the  School  of  Philanthropy 
in  New  York  two  years  ago,  who  seemed  to  be 
eminently  fitted  to  be  a  really  great  minister;  he 
had,  so  far  as  one  could  see  and  know,  every  promise 
of  exceptional  power.  He  started,  indeed,  in  the 
theological  school,  and  I  said  to  him,  as  I  have 
said  a  hundred  times  and  more  to  others,  "  Tell 
me  why  you  switched  off  and  came  here  and  are 
going  to  take  the  secretaryship  of  a  State  board  of 
charities  in  the  South  instead  of  taking  a  church." 
He  said,  "  What  the  church  does  in  social  move- 
ments seems  so  futile,  so  far  away,  so  indefinite; 
I  want  really  to  help  to  make  this  world  a  better 
place  for  human  beings  to  live  in."  But  I  said, 
"  My  young  friend,  I  understand  how  you  feel ; 
perhaps  no  member  of  the  faculty  here  could  un- 


THE  SOCIAL  FUNCTION  25 

derstand  it  better.  But  think  many  times  before 
you  give  up  the  old  church,  because  that  is  what 
3rou  are  doing  if  you  say  that  the  church  can- 
not take  a  commanding  position  in  what  is  the 
dominating  motive  and  the  dominating  effort  of 
the  age.  Do  you  not  shelve  it,  practically?  Do 
you  not  say,  The  things  for  which  the  church 
stands,  that  no  other  institution  can  stand  for, 
are  not  worth  while  so  much  as  the  things  it  fails 
to  stand  for?  " 

Therefore,  it  seems  to  me  that  those  who  have 
remained  within  the  church,  and  above  all  those 
who  are  guiding  the  lines  of  church  tendency  in 
this  rapidly-changing  era  of  ours,  should  consider 
how  definite  and  practical,  as  well  as  wise  and  im- 
portant, they  may  make  their  offer  of  service  to 
every  young  and  ardent  soul. 


PRACTICAL  SUGGESTIONS  FOR  SERVICE 

FREDERIC  ALMY 

Secretary,  Charity  Organization  Society,  Buffalo, 
N.  Y. 

In  speaking  here  as  a  layman  to  ministers  and 
church  workers,  I  think  I  ought  to  give  my  cre- 
dentials. After  I  left  Harvard  I  lived  in  Edward 
Everett  Hale's  family  for  some  time  and  helped 
him  in  his  visiting  of  the  poor.  Then  I  went  to 
the  Harvard  Law  School,  and  practiced  law  for 
seven  years  before  I  reformed.  For  the  last  nine- 
teen years  I  have  been  secretary  of  the  Charity 
Organization  Society  in  Buffalo,  which  is  the  oldest 
in  this  country.  The  first  thing  we  did  there  nine- 
teen years  ago  was  to  form  districts,  one  hundred 
and  fifty  of  them,  and  offer  each  one  to  a  separate 
church.  One  hundred  and  twenty-two  churches, 
Catholic,  Jewish,  Protestant,  took  these  districts. 
Each  church  agreed  to  care  for  the  neglected  poor 
of  any  faith  within  its  district,  and  I  have  seen 
many  Protestant  churches  caring  for  Catholics  and 
Catholic  churches  caring  for  Protestants. 

Some  of  my  friends  in  social  work  say  they  en- 
joy seeing  me  squirm  when  people  ask  me  about 
those  church  districts.  They  are  so  much  less 
than  they  might  be  that  they  often  seem  like  noth- 


PRACTICAL  SUGGESTIONS  27 

ing.  And  yet  there  is  a  great  value  to  a  church 
in  having  a  definitely  bounded  district  for  its  work 
among  the  poor,  concentrated  where  results  are 
visible.  There  is  an  economy  of  time  and  force, 
and  I  believe  heartily  in  such  districts  if  they  are 
organized  with  competent,  paid  service  to  guide 
the  volunteers,  but  not  otherwise.  Through  these 
districts  we  have  a  better  church  cooperation,  I 
think,  in  Buffalo  than  in  most  cities.  Organized 
charity  never  was  really  popular  with  the  churches. 
And  yet  the  Roman  Catholic  bishop  not  long  ago 
gave  us  $1,000  and  in  another  year  $500  without 
any  limitations,  and  issued  instructions  to  his 
priests  to  cooperate  with  us. 

It  is  not  accident  that  twenty-seven  of  these 
churches  took  districts  in  distant  parts  of  the  city 
with  which  twenty  of  them  had  no  previous  con- 
nection of  any  kind,  and  that  there  are  in  Buffalo 
six  well-equipped  settlements  maintained  by 
churches.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  Epis- 
copal settlement  had  a  Universalist  head  worker, 
the  Unitarian  settlement  a  Presbyterian  head 
ft-orkcr,  and  so  on.  These  settlements  take  a  great 
leal  of  money,  and  I  am  not  sure  that  the  church- 
supported  settlement  is  the  best.  In  a  way  it  is 
limited,  with  a  less  broad  platform,  but  still  the 
continuing  station  with  groups  of  people  who  are 
icquainted  is  really  worth  a  great  deal.  Any 
church  can  rent  a  room  for  one  afternoon  and  even- 
ng  a  week,  or  in  time  for  every  afternoon  and 
evening,  and  it  will  have  social  work  at  an  ex- 


28  PRACTICAL  SUGGESTIONS 

tremely  small  cost.  Miss  Elizabeth  Williams,  who 
for  many  years  has  been  the  head  of  the  College 
Settlement  in  New  York,  started  Neighborhood 
House  in  Buffalo  by  renting  one  such  room  at  $5 
a  month,  and  there  with  clubs  and  classes  gradually 
was  built  up  what  became  a  large  settlement.  I 
am  sure  the  penny  savings  banks,  home  libraries 
and  all  the  activities  of  such  a  building,  are 
familiar. 

At  one  time  I  thought  this  was  the  only  service 
of  the  church ;  I  could  not  see  the  other  side,  and 
in  our  annual  report  we  listed  our  one  hundred 
and  twenty  churches  and  told  what  each  one  was 
doing  in  institutional  work.  To-day  I  do  not  feel 
so  sure  that  the  churches  should  do  social  work. 
At  the  National  Conference  of  Charities  which 
met  in  Boston  there  was  a  section  on  "  The  Church 
and  Social  Service."  Dr.  Washington  Gladden 
was  the  chairman.  We  put  this  question: 
"  Should  the  individual  church  inspire,  interpret, 
guide  or  administer  social  work?  "  I  believe  it 
should  inspire,  interpret,  guide  but  not  administer. 
The  administration  is  better  done  by  lay  agencies 
where  they  exist;  where  they  do  not  exist  a  com- 
bination of  churches  representing  more  than  one 
denomination  can  handle  a  social  need  more  ef- 
fectively than  a  single  church.  I  do  not  like  to 
see  a  church  running  tuberculosis  work  when  there 
is  no  organized  charity.  It  would  do  better  to 
start  a  movement  for  a  charity  organization  so- 
ciety which  could  organize  social  work  among  all 


29 

denominations.  The  Boston  National  Conference 
of  Charities  printed  a  special  pamphlet  giving  all 
the  addresses  on  "  The  Church  and  Social  Service," 
and  there  you  will  find  many  practical  suggestions. 

The  one  special  practical  suggestion  to  OUT  church 
districts  was  the  friendly  visiting,  which  is  so  well 
developed  in  Boston.  Our  friendly  visitors,  like 
our  church  districts,  were  a  blessing  and  a  torment. 
There  are  four  kinds  of  friendly  visitors:  Those 
who  neglect  their  families,  those  who  patronize 
their  families,  those  who  spoil  their  families  and 
those  who  help  their  families ;  and  at  times  I  have 
wanted  to  throw  all  the  church  districts  and  all  the 
volunteer  visitors  out  of  the  window. 

Two  years  ago  I  became  interested  in  the  "  Men 
and  Religion  Movement,"  although  it  does  not 
include  Unitarians.  We  needed  it  in  Buffalo  to 
enlist  the  churches  still  further  in  social  service. 
That  movement  was  Protestant  and  did  not  include 
the  older  Roman  Catholic  Church  nor  the  still 
older  Jewish  Church  nor  anything  so  young  as 
the  Unitarian  Church,  but  it  is  no  small  gain  to  the 
world  when  the  Protestant  churches  will  cooperate 
with  themselves.  If  you  want  suggestions  for 
service  I  advise  you  to  buy  and  read  the  seven  small 
volumes  called  "  Men  and  Religion  Messages," 
which  cost  four  dollars ;  at  all  events,  do  not  fail 
to  buy  the  second  volume,  on  social  service,  which 
costs  one  dollar.  I  had  thought  that  a  movement 
representing  all  denominations,  all  parts  of  the 
country,  would  be  conservative  and  antiquated. 


30  PRACTICAL  SUGGESTIONS 

It  is  the  opposite.  It  is  a  ringing  appeal,  not  from 
the  social  workers  to  the  church,  but  from  the 
church  to  the  church  for  social  service,  and  the 
various  volumes  are  full  of  the  most  splendid  sug- 
gestions. One  paragraph,  I  think  by  Dr.  Gladden, 
though  it  is  not  signed,  I  want  to  read: 

"  The  one  great  thing  which  the  Men  and  Religion 
Forward  Movement  has  done  for  the  American 
churches  is  to  set  blazing  before  them  the  truth  and 
the  tasks  which  are  suggested  by  this  phrase  '  social 
service.'  This  truth  they  can  never  again  deny,  these 
tasks  they  can  never  again  evade,  without  the  con- 
sciousness of  apostasy.  .  .  .  Religion  will  either 
mean  a  great  deal  more  in  America  in  the  next  ten 
years  than  it  has  ever  meant  before,  or  it  will  find 
itself,  before  the  end  of  that  time,  in  the  way  of  mean- 
ing nothing  at  all.  .  .  .  There  are  still  millions  of 
church  members  in  America  who  need  to  be  convinced 
that  the  kind  of  work  to  which  Jesus  Christ  devoted 
a  large  part  of  his  time  is  Christian  work." 

Dr.  Coffin,  the  chairman,  says: 

"  It  is  not  the  church's  function,  any  more  than  it 
was  the  Lord's,  to  give  specific  directions  to  its  mem- 
bers for  the  readjustment  of  civic  or  business 
life.  .  .  .  Service,  not  leadership,  is  the  church's 
mission." 

While  the  Catholic  Church  still  holds  on  to  its 
schools  and  its  hospitals,  the  Protestant  churches 
for  the  most  part  have  handed  theirs  together 
with  the  administration  of  general  charity  over  to 


31 


lay  bodies.  As  Dr.  Crothers  has  said,  we  want 
every  church  to  support  and  feed  these  movements, 
but  not  itself  to  conduct  them,  because  so  the 
pastor  loses  his  spiritual  life  and  has  not  time  to 
pray. 

In  the  Men  and  Religion  Movement  I  found 
what  it  meant  to  make  definite  practical  sugges- 
tions when  it  is  so  much  easier  to  generalize.  I 
was  chairman  of  the  Social  Service  Committee  of 
the  Movement  in  Buffalo.  Eighty-three  churches 
there  appointed  social  service  committees  of  their 
own,  and  they  came  and  asked  what  to  do.  It  was 
as  if  Niagara  should  come  up  and  ask  to  be  har- 
nessed, and  I  didn't  know  how  to  find  definite  work 
for  all  the  people.  I  printed  a  little  pamphlet 
giving  the  names  of  the  Common  Council,  the 
recommendations  of  Raymond  Robbins  to  the 
social  service  committee  respecting  things  needed 
in  Buffalo,  the  dates  when  the  budget  was  passed 
upon  in  the  city  government,  and  giving  the  names 
of  all  these  eighty-three  committees,  and  here  was 
a  definite  chore  for  unskilled  people.  Almost  any- 
one can  write  letters  or  heckle  an  alderman,  and 
we  got  the  aldermen  so  busy  with  the  health  items, 
the  educational  items,  and  the  playground  items 
of  the  budget  that  we  succeeded  to  some  extent  in 
assisting  the  city  departments  that  had  social  work 
in  their  charge.  Next  year  this  will  be  more  ef- 
fectual because  the  Men  and  Religion  Movement 
will  continue  with  a  competent  paid  secretary. 
Also  our  Charity  Organization  Society  has  en- 


32  PRACTICAL  SUGGESTIONS 

gaged  a  special  church  secretary,  and  we  have  one 
visitor  who  gives  her  whole  time  to  securing  volun- 
teers from  the  churches.  With  these  three  people, 
two  from  the  Charity  Organization  Society  and 
one  paid  by  the  churches,  and  with  the  background 
in  Buffalo  that  the  churches  there  feel  some  re- 
sponsibility toward  the  Charity  Organization  So- 
ciety, we  hope  we  can  get  something  definite  and 
make  Buffalo  a  better  city  through  a  practical 
expression  of  Christianity. 

Let  no  one  think  that  you  can  organize  social 
service  without  someone  to  do  the  organizing,  and 
it  takes  ability  to  organize.  The  modern  social 
worker  must  be  trained.  It  is  easy  to  make  a 
fetich  of  this  special  training,  but  it  is  dangerous 
to  neglect  its  importance.  It  takes  ability  and 
knowledge  as  well  as  consecration  to  mend  broken 
lives  and  to  change  social  conditions,  and  no  com- 
petent society  will  employ  incompetent  people  to 
help  the  incompetent  poor.  The  social  forces 
which  affect  the  lives  of  both  individuals  and  com- 
munities are  dangerous  in  the  extreme.  They 
must,  therefore,  be  handled  by  people  who  are  com- 
petent for  danger.  It  is,  of  course,  absolutely 
necessary  to  play  with  fire  if  the  machinery  of 
the  world  is  to  move.  If  the  fire  does  not  burn  the 
wheels  will  not  turn,  but  children  should  not  be 
allowed  to  play  with  fire.  The  social  engineer 
who  stokes  our  dangerous  social  fires  should  have 
a  license.  It  is  a  new  profession.  The  lawyer 
who  practices  on  your  property  has  a  license,  the 


PRACTICAL  SUGGESTIONS  33 

doctor  who  practices  on  your  body  has  a  license,  the 
minister  who  deals  with  your  soul  has  his  license, 
and  social  workers  must  have  a  license  if  they  are 
to  handle  the  lives  of  our  poor. 

Social  work  calls  for  team  play  from  all  de- 
nominations, Catholic,  Jew,  Protestant,  from 
Chambers  of  Commerce  and  labor  unions,  and  all 
are  coming  into  it.  Teachers  and  librarians  are 
coming  into  social  work.  Life  is  becoming  so- 
cialized, and  you  will  find  plenty  of  willing  people 
if  you  can  find  plenty  of  inspiring  tasks.  Don't 
try  to  have  the  church  administer  these  things, 
but  see  that  the  people  of  your  church  are  every- 
where serving.  The  church  as  a  church  should  let 
go,  unless  there  is  a  definite  chore  that  the  church 
ought  to  undertake  and  which  is  not  otherwise  pos- 
sible. Also,  read  "  The  Survey " ;  everybody 
should  read  it,  the  pastor  and  all  his  people,  or 
at  least  take  it  and  look  at  it.  I  would  advise 
a  weekly  study  class  where  those  who  do  not  read 
but  learn  by  ear  can  gather  and  talk  over  each 
number  and  see  what  there  is  of  suggestion  for 
their  home  town.  Study  classes  are  good,  for  so 
many  people  want  to  do  before  they  know,  and 
activity  without  intelligence  is  the  bane  of  prac- 
tical reformers.  I  have  people  come  to  me  or 
telephone  me,  and  say,  "  I  am  to  read  a  paper  to- 
morrow on  Buffalo  charities,  can't  you  tell  me  over 
the  telephone  what  to  say?  "  One  man  wanted 
some  books  on  Socialism.  I  chose  a  few  and  had 
them  ready  for  him.  When  he  came  in  he  said,  "  I 


34 

believe  my  paper  is  to  be  on  sociology,  not 
Socialism." 

We  had  a  successful  Seminar  in  Buffalo  which 
ran  three  years.  That  is  something  that  could 
well  be  copied  in  many  cities.  A  group  came  to- 
gether; they  had  a  carefully-prepared  program, 
and  the  workers,  mostly  volunteers,  went  out  over 
the  city  and  saw  housing  conditions,  labor  con- 
ditions, health  conditions  and  various  other  things, 
and  came  back  with  papers  and  discussions,  but 
if  that  were  done  by  each  denomination  it  would 
mean  so  much  surveying  that  the  worm  would  turn. 
In  a  box  factory  which  was  visited  by  one  com- 
mittee they  were  very  glad  to  see  them;  when  the 
third  committee  came  they  were  less  glad.  The 
method  of  conducting  such  a  Seminar  is  clearly 
described  by  Mr.  Boynton,  the  Unitarian  minister 
in  Buffalo,  in  "  The  Survey  "  for  August  1,  1910. 

A  survey  of  the  cost  of  living  is  very  valuable. 
You  can  find  from  your  laundress  and  from  a  num- 
ber of  poor  people  you  know,  what  it  costs  a 
thrifty,  poor,  intelligent  family  to  live  decently. 
And  when  you  compare  that  with  the  wages  of 
unskilled  labor,  you  will  soon  learn  that  unskilled 
labor  can  not  afford  the  ordinary  decencies  of  life. 
Even  if  you  work  every  day,  with  no  idleness,  no 
bad  habits,  and  no  sickness,  unskilled  labor  does 
not  afford  the  ordinary  decencies  of  life.  I  like 
to  have  that  brought  home  to  employers  so  that 
they  cannot  possibly  dispute  it.  Then  I  advise 
everyone  to  get  Miss  Byington's  pamphlet, 


35 

"  What  a  Social  Worker  should  know  about  his 
own  Community  !  "  five  cents  each,  and  less  in  quan- 
tity, published  by  the  Russell  Sage  Foundation, 
which  will  suggest  more  than  any  one  church  can 
undertake  in  many  years. 

I  do  not  want  to  go  into  the  "  catalogue  of 
ships  "  of  the  hundred  and  more  forms  of  social 
work  —  tuberculosis  work,  child  labor  work,  play- 
grounds and  all  that.  But  the  present  newest 
thing  —  newest  toy,  I  was  going  to  say  —  is  the 
survey.  It  is  good,  very  good.  But  the  survey 
means  anything  from  the  $30,000  Pittsburgh  sur- 
vey to  a  30-cent  survey  which  I  have  seen  more 
than  once  undertaken.  Thirty  years  ago  every 
city  had  to  have  a  charity  organization  society; 
twenty  years  ago  every  city  had  to  have  a  uni- 
versity settlement;  ten  years  ago  it  had  to  have 
playgrounds  and  juvenile  courts;  five  years  ago 
it  was  tuberculosis,  and  now  it  is  the  survey.  The 
Sage  Foundation  has  established  a  special  survey 
department  which  can  advise  any  city  that  wants 
a  survey  what  the  services  of  experts  will  cost, 
and  what  volunteers  can  do.  It  can  provide  for 
you  any  kind  of  a  survey  costing  from  $100  to 
$10,000.  Our  Buffalo  survey  of  the  Polish 
quarter  cost  us  about  $4,000  and  was  worth  it 
all. 

When  medicine  became  social  as  well  as  indi- 
vidual, disease  rapidly  began  to  die.  The  death 
rate  has  fallen  off  wonderfully  since  public  hygiene 
came  in,  so  that  we  no  longer  have  merely  the 


36  PRACTICAL  SUGGESTIONS 

individual  doctor  curing  his  individual  patient  but 
we  have  also  the  large  social  measures  against 
disease.  Now,  when  to  individual  religion,  where 
one  pastor  saves  individual  souls,  we  add  social 
religion,  where  the  churches  work  together  for  the 
salvation  of  the  community,  we  shall  see  a  decrease 
of  sin  and  misery  and  poverty  such  as  we  have 
seen  in  the  case  of  disease.  There  are  two  com- 
mandments in  the  New  Testament :  "  Thou  shalt 
love  the  Lord  thy  God,"  and  "  Thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself."  The  second  is  the  social 
commandment;  it  translates  the  first  into  action, 
and  without  it  the  first  is  unavailing. 

There  is  a  school  for  defective  children  in  a 
town  in  West  Virginia,  where  I  am  acquainted 
with  the  superintendent.  Someone  asked  the  boys, 
"  Whom  did  George  Washington  marry  ?  "  And 
one  answer  was,  "  George  Washington  married  a 
daughter  of  Colonel  Robert  Lee,  and  fought  her 
bravely."  That  is  not  the  conventional  idea  of 
marriage,  but  too  often  the  church  stays  unmar- 
ried. Many  of  you  have  read  the  papers  in  the 
Atlantic  about  "  John  Smith  and  the  Church."  I 
want  the  church  to  marry  John  Smith,  as  in  the 
boy's  answer.  We  want  the  church,  not  only  to 
inspire,  not  only  to  give  us  the  prophet's  vision, 
but  we  want  the  church  to  harness  itself  to  life 
in  accordance  with  the  second  of  Christ's  com- 
mandments, and  to  see  that  its  men  and  women  get 
into  effective  social  service.  And  if  that  comes, 
the  little  John  Smiths  will  all  go  to  church.  I 


PRACTICAL  SUGGESTIONS  37 

have  no  fear  of  it  if  they  find  there  a  definite  con- 
nection between  a  better  world  and  religion.  The 
only  way  I  know  to  have  a  better  city  is  to  have 
better  citizens,  and  the  only  way  to  have  better 
citizens  is  to  give  them  better  opportunities  for 
morality,  health  and  education.  This  the  men  in 
the  churches  can  do. 

I  have  always  believed  that  anything  that  makes 
efficient  citizens  is  good  charity.  Philanthropy  is 
citizenship,  and  both  philanthropy  and  citizenship 
are  in  a  sense  religion.  There  is  no  better  way 
of  expressing  religion  than  by  fighting  the  great 
enemies  of  the  world — disease,  ignorance,  sin  and 
poverty.  It  can  be  done  without  in  the  least  en- 
dangering the  spirituality  of  the  church ;  indeed,  I 
believe  that  by  it  spirituality  will  be  increased. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  SOCIAL  UNREST 

SAMUEL,  M.  CROTHERS,  D.D. 
Minister  of  the  First  Parish  Church,  Cambridge 

The  subject  which  is  given  to  me  this  morning 
must  be  looked  upon  by  one  who  considers  the 
general  purpose  of  this  conference  as  an  inter- 
ruption of  the  programme,  and  I  want  to  treat 
it  in  that  way.  The  reason  for  bringing 
it  into  such  a  programme  —  this  subject  of  what 
we  call  the  social  unrest  of  our  time  —  is  that  it 
is  an  interruption  of  our  business  of  philanthropy 
and  religion  that  comes  to  us  in  the  order  of 
human  development.  That  is  to  say,  our  main 
object  and  purpose  in  meeting  here  is  to  help  our 
fellow  men,  to  help  particularly  those  who  are 
in  need,  to  share  as  wisely  as  we  can  all  the 
privileges,  whether  of  education  or  of  position, 
which  may  have  come  to  us.  We  come  as  mem- 
bers of  an  existing  order  of  things  which  we  take 
for  granted,  and  we  want  to  apply  our  minds  here 
and  there  to  points  where  this  existing  order  works 
cruelly  to  classes  or  individuals.  Our  purpose 
is  a  peaceful  purpose,  a  purpose  of  orderly  and 
humane  helpfulness,  and  that  for  which  we  have 

come  is  to  consult  with  experts  who  can  show  us 

38 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  UNREST      39 

the  ways  and  means  for  doing  our  immediate 
duty. 

Now,  what  is  the  interruption?  It  is  the  same 
kind  of  interruption  which  comes  to  a  nation  when 
suddenly  it  is  threatened  by  some  foe  from  without 
or  from  within  that  strikes,  as  it  seems,  at  its 
very  life. 

I  believe,  and  I  think  you  all  believe,  that  we  are 
living  in  no  ordinary  time.  It  is  an  age  of  revo- 
lution. Events  everywhere  are  moving  more  rap- 
idly, sometimes  more  violently,  than  in  any  of 
the  historic  times  we  read  of,  more  violently  than 
they  were  moving  in  the  time  of  the  great  French 
Revolution.  There  are  divisions  that  run  deeper 
than  any  economic  questions  of  the  day,  there  are 
questions  which  frighten  when  we  hear  them  ad- 
dressed to  us  by  some  new  voice.  We  try  to  help 
those  who  need  help  and  recognize  that  they  need 
it,  and  we  expect  some  kind  of  cooperation  or  at 
least  some  kind  of  gratitude  from  them.  Then 
we  go  out  into  the  world  and  the  moment  we  get 
beyond  our  little  circle,  whether  it  be  in  the  church 
or  in  the  philanthropic  society  or  among  the  people 
that  we  meet  every  day,  we  find  everything  chal- 
lenged. We  find  dissatisfaction,  not  at  what  we 
call  the  evil  things  of  the  world,  but  at  what  we 
have  been  accustomed  to  call  the  good  things.  We 
try  to  help  people  and  we  are  rudely  challenged. 
It  is  as  if  the  Good  Samaritan  coming  with  the 
very  best  intent  in  the  world  to  lift  up  the  man 
among  thieves  should  suddenly  find  that  man  grasp- 


40      THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  UNREST 

ing  him  by  the  throat  and  saying,  "  Now  I've  got 
you  just  where  I  want  you,  pay  me  what  thou 
owest  me !  "  and  he  found  that  that  man  hated 
him  and  looked  upon  him  as  an  enemy. 

Last  summer,  going  out  one  Sunday  afternoon 
from  the  quiet  of  Westminster  Abbey,  upon  walk- 
ing across  Hyde  Park,  there  came  suddenly  a 
great  army  with  banners  marching  as  to  war,  forty 
thousand  disciplined  men  with  leaders.  In  orderly 
fashion  they  grouped  themselves  around  several 
platforms.  The  thing  that  struck  me  was  the  tre- 
mendous power  of  it.  Ben  Tillett  and  the  others 
of  whom  the  newspapers  have  spoken  scornfully, 
seemed  to  me  to  be  leaders  of  men.  This  great 
army,  these  men  who  had  tramped  from  East  Lon- 
don, was  listening  to  them.  What  were  they 
saying?  I  spent  the  afternoon  trying  to  find  out 
what  they  were  talking  about,  and  they  were 
saying  essentially  the  same  things  that  we  are 
saying  to  a  quiet  little  group  of  people  in  our 
churches.  They  were  uttering  the  same  princi- 
ples precisely  which  the  General  Unitarian  Con- 
ference in  its  last  session  adopted  unanimously, 
the  same  thing  which  the  Federation  of  Churches 
in  America  the  other  day  adopted  unanimously, 
as  something  which  we  all  believe  and  which  the 
newspapers  call  a  "  social  creed  "  of  the  churches. 
What  was  the  difference?  The  difference  was 
that  those  men  in  Hyde  Park  thought  that  some- 
body was  objecting  to  that  programme,  to  those 
ideas  in  regard  to  child  labor,  the  living  wage, 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  UNREST      41 

the  employment  of  women,  and  their  creed  had 
"  damnatory  articles  "  appended  to  it.  They  be- 
lieve that  we  are  going  to  perish  everlastingly,  and 
not  only  everlastingly  but  pretty  soon,  because 
they  believe  we  are  hypocrites.  That  is  all  that 
I  gathered  from  those  meetings.  There  was  noth- 
ing there  that  shocked  me  except  this,  that  they 
believed  that  in  order  to  bring  about  these  things 
which  they  felt  to  be  necessary,  a  great  uprising 
of  the  disinherited  peoples  was  necessary.  They 
believed  that  the  very  men  and  women  I  had  been 
preaching  to,  and  to  whom  I  had  been  saying  the 
same  thing  that  very  morning  in  our  church  at 
Hampstead,  were  their  enemies,  that  they  had  to 
fight  them,  that  they  had  to  bring  them  down; 
Ben  Tillett  pointed  across  to  the  people  riding 
in  the  carriages  beyond  the  crowd  and  repeated 
that  saying  continually  quoted  on  such  occasions, 
"  We  are  many,  they  are  few."  And  the  great 
crowd  seemed  thrilled  with  the  sense  of  something 
coming,  of  something  that  is  of  the  nature  of 
war,  of  conflict,  bitter,  unrelenting,  that  calls  for 
the  ethics  not  of  peace  but  of  the  sword.  Those 
people  believed  that  elementary  justice  and  Chris- 
tian sympathy  and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  are 
not  the  laws  which  we  really  obey,  and  when  they 
read  the  creed  of  the  churches  they  laugh  bit- 
terly :  "  Woe,  woe,  woe  to  you,  hypocrites  !  " 

That  is  what  I  call  the  social  unrest.  It  is 
dissatisfaction,  it  is  desire.  Now  how  can  that 
social  unrest  be  settled  or  satisfied? 


42      THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  UNREST 

The  first  thing  that  I  would  say  is  that  we  must 
rise  to  the  height  of  the  great  argument  of  re- 
ligion, and  that  is  to  say  and  to  feel  that  never 
while  the  world  lasts  can  it  be  satisfied,  because 
the  demands  of  the  human  heart  once  awakened 
are  infinite.  We  are  all  of  us  desiring  the  earth. 
The  captain  of  industry  desires  to  expand  his  in- 
dustries, and  he  is  right.  The  scientific  man  is 
not  satisfied  when  you  tell  him  certain  elementary 
truths,  he  wants  something  more.  You  and  I  are 
not  satisfied  in  our  desire  for  righteousness ;  we 
want  more  righteousness,  and  unless  our  righteous- 
ness exceeds  the  righteousness  of  the  Scribes  and 
Pharisees  —  that  is,  exceeds  the  righteousness  that 
we  have  —  we  have  not  begun  to  understand  the 
meaning  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  An  unfilled  de- 
sire, an  infinite  hunger  for  good,  that  is  what  un- 
rest means.  It  is  not  going  to  be  satisfied  by  giving 
alms,  neither  is  it  going  to  be  satisfied  by  giving 
laws.  It  is  going  to  keep  on  hungering,  and 
blessed  be  they  who  hunger  and  thirst  after  right- 
eousness. 

When  we  talk  of  the  unrest  of  our  age  we  have 
to  distinguish  a  little.  We  imagine  sometimes  that 
people  are  suddenly  becoming  dissatisfied  with 
their  condition,  but  people  always  have  been  dissat- 
isfied with  their  condition  whenever  they  were  alive. 
What  happens  is  that  this  dissatisfaction  is  re- 
pressed, and  it  is  repressed  by  the  common  sense  of 
the  crowd.  There  is  an  inhibition  upon  our  desires. 
There  are  many  things  that  we  would  like  to  have, 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  UNREST      43 

all  of  us,  but  we  do  not  express  the  wish.  We 
do  not  let  our  neighbors  know  it,  because  we  know 
we  cannot  have  it.  I  suppose  there  is  not  a  stu- 
dent in  Harvard  College  who  inwardly  does  not 
wish  he  were  a  genius,  but  he  knows  he  is  not 
and  he  does  not  know  any  way  by  which  he  can 
become  one.  So  he  goes  along  quite  contented 
to  be  an  ordinary  student  and  contented  if  he  can 
pass  his  examination,  which  is  the  minimum  edu- 
cational wage  of  an  institution  of  learning.  We 
say  he  is  contented.  But  you  let  that  young  man 
get  the  idea  that  he  can  be  something  that  he  is 
not,  and  he  becomes  discontented  with  himself. 
We  go  into  the  United  States  mint  or  the  United 
States  treasury  and  are  shown  the  treasures  there. 
We  are  allowed  to  handle  thousands  of  dollars 
and  to  see  all  this  wealth.  We  go  perfectly  un- 
rnoved  through  it  all.  We  are  not  conscious  of 
any  avarice,  we  are  not  conscious  of  wanting  to 
grab  something  and  take  it  home  and  pay  our 
mortgage.  It  does  not  enter  our  heads.  We  sim- 
ply look  at  it;  we  go  along  perfectly  unmoved. 
It  would  be  different  if  the  inhibitions  were  re- 
moved. Here  is  the  gold  on  the  floor.  If  you 
put  forth  your  hand  you  can  take  it  and  make  it 
your  own.  The  most  dignified  person  would  be 
excited.  I  should  like  to  have  him  go  through 
that  United  States  mint  when  he  was  perfectly 
convinced  that  he  could  get  away  with  all  the  gold 
he  could  carry,  and  that  no  particular  harm  would 
come  from  it.  If  all  the  moral  inhibitions  and  the 


44     THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  UNREST 

social  inhibitions  and  the  inhibition  of  the  police 
were  removed  we  should  all  yield  to  the  impulse  to 
acquire  a  competency. 

Now,  that  is  what  has  happened  to  mankind. 
Nobody  was  ever  in  his  heart  satisfied  with  the 
slums,  satisfied  with  a  life  of  drudgery  and  satis- 
fied with  the  infinite  waste  that  is  going  on.  But 
people  said,  "  These  things  are  necessary,  they 
are  inevitable,  they  are  part  of  the  order  of  things, 
and  we  must  make  the  best  of  it."  So  we  all  do 
make  the  best  of  it.  Now,  science  has  come  into 
the  world,  cold,  clear  science.  It  has  applied  the 
methods  of  investigation  to  actual  conditions  un- 
der which  men  live,  and  it  is  saying  —  saying 
through  a  thousand  voices  and  publishing  every- 
where the  fact  that  most  of  the  evils  of  society, 
all  of  the  waste  of  society,  are  in  the  last  analysis 
unnecessary.  It  declares  that  a  large  number  of 
the  most  distressing  diseases  have  their  known 
remedies,  and  if  people  would  apply  their  minds 
and  their  wills  as  intelligently  and  continuously  as 
they  apply  themselves  to  the  pursuit  of  individual 
wealth,  the  diseases  would  cease  to  exist.  It  is 
science,  the  science  of  the  physician,  the  science 
of  the  social  worker,  the  science  that  has  to  do 
with  all  the  affairs  of  life,  that  is  saying  this,  with 
its  stimulus  to  all  social  activities. 

The  danger  in  it  comes  from  this  fact,  that  the 
intellectual  progress  of  mankind  has  outstripped 
the  moral  progress  of  mankind.  And  it  also  comes 
from  this,  that  under  the  conditions  of  modern  life 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  UNREST     45 

with  its  instant  diffusion  of  the  results  of  science, 
the  mass  of  men  have  moved  faster  than  what  we 
call  the  privileged  class  of  society ;  that  they  have 
caught  on,  as  we  say,  more  quickly  to  the  fact  that 
there  is  a  possible  remedy. 

We  are  just  in  the  condition  that  I  am  when  I 
come  in  from  Cambridge  on  this  new  subway  and 
go  up  the  moving  stairway.  I  go  up  all  right 
and  everybody  is  going  on,  but  when  I  take  the 
next  step  individually  and  step  off  that  moving 
sidewalk,  my  head  goes  round  and  round.  Some- 
body ought  to  be  there  to  lend  a  hand  at  that  time. 
It  is  at  that  point  where  our  individual  interests 
conflict  with  what  we  know  to  be  the  public  inter- 
ests, when  that  which  the  few  enjoy  prevents  them 
from  seeing  what  the  many  not  only  need  but  de- 
mand, that  the  danger  to  peaceful  evolution  comes 
and  the  danger  of  class  war  is  imminent. 

Now,  what  should  be  the  attitude  of  the  churches 
and  those  who  are  given  any  leadership  in  the 
churches  in  this  crisis?  Here  I  want  to  say  one 
thing  by  way  of  warning  on  the  prudential  side, 
and  another  in  the  way  of  hope  of  that  which 
seems  to  me  possible  for  us  to  do.  First,  the  pru- 
dential. We  need  more  than  we  need  anything 
else,  and  particularly  we  need  it  in  the  theological 
seminaries  —  we  need  thought.  We  need  medita- 
tion that  shall  take  in  in  a  broad  way  the  trend 
of  religion  and  of  humanity  and  prevent  us  from 
making  the  mistakes  which  otherwise  we  almost 
inevitably  make.  I  am  going  to  say  something 


46     THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  UNREST 

which  is  simply  my  own  opinion.  I  do  not  like 
to  say  it,  because  it  seems  to  be  criticising  what 
is  generally  considered  the  next  step.  I  spoke 
of  that  social  creed  which  the  churches  the  other 
day  adopted,  which  we  have  adopted  in  fact  as 
a  denomination.  Now,  a  platform,  if  it  is  un- 
derstood as  a  platform,  is  all  right.  It  says, 
"  Here  is  something,  some  few  things,  perhaps, 
that  we  can  unite  on  and  do  " —  some  time,  this 
year  or  next  year.  But  I  have  been  troubled 
when  I  have  seen  the  newspapers  talk  about  a 
social  creed,  because  I  fear  creeds  even  when  they 
bring  philanthropic  gifts.  And  I  fear  that  the 
churches  will  do  in  regard  to  these  social  things 
just  exactly  what  they  have  done  in  the  past  — 
that  is,  unite  and  make  a  creed  of  the  things  which 
ought  to  be  done,  and  then  sit  back  and  think 
they  have  done  them.  Then  I  am  afraid  of  an- 
other thing  which  the  church  has  always  done 
when  it  has  been  left  to  itself  in  this  fashion: 
that  is,  when  it  has  formed  the  creed  or  the 
things  it  is  commonly  believed  should  be  done, 
that  it  will  drive  out  the  people  who  do  not  be- 
lieve that  creed,  or  make  them  exceedingly  un- 
comfortable. 

I  am  not  saying  anything  against  that  social 
creed.  I  have  read  it  over  and  compared  it  article 
by  article  with  the  Progressive  platform,  and  it 
is  almost  word  for  word  the  same.  But  I  think 
there  is  a  difference  between  a  church  and  a  po- 
litical party,  even  the  Progressive  Party.  The 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  UNREST      47 

church  is  for  all  time  and  all  souls,  and  a  party 
is  for  one  time  and  for  one  kind  of  souls ;  one  is  a 
fighting  proposition,  the  other  is  a  message  of 
peace  and  good-will  in  larger  view. 

However  earnestly  we  desire  specific  reforms,  I 
think  we  must  beware  of  interfering  with  the  spir- 
itual liberty  of  the  church.  A  church  is  not  a 
political  party.  The  methods  of  a  political  party 
are  necessarily  different  from  those  of  a  church. 
It  is  necessary  for  the  party  continually  to  restate 
its  opinions  in  controversial  terms.  To  a  church, 
a  broad  unity  of  faith  and  feeling  is  a  necessity. 
Partisanship  even  on  moral  and  social  lines  is  to 
be  avoided. 

I  believe  that  it  is  possible  to  do  effective  work 
without  indulging  in  controversial  spirit  or  in 
dogmatism.  The  method  of  modern  philanthropy 
is  tolerant  of  variety.  There  are  all  sorts  of  good 
things  to  be  done  by  all  sorts  of  people  in  all 
sorts  of  ways.  The  church  is  the  natural  meeting 
place  for  these  people.  It  must  not  seek  to  have 
dominion  over  men's  faith  but  to  be  the  helper  of 
their  joy. 

Above  all  it  must  not  be  afraid  of  the  social 
unrest,  it  must  interpret  it.  It  is  itself  the  ex- 
pression of  restless  desire  for  greater  good. 

Mr.  Deland,  in  a  delightful  article  in  the  At- 
lantic, quoted  the  story  of  the  English  traveler 
on  the  railway  who  fell  in  with  Karl  Baedeker, 
not  knowing  who  he  was.  After  a  while  he  turned 
to  this  unknown  person  and  said,  "  My  dear  sir, 


48      THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  UNREST 

do  you  have  a  Baedeker  about  you?  "  and  he  an- 
swered, "  Gott  in  Himmel !  I  am  it." 

We  belong  to  the  church  of  the  apostles,  of 
the  prophets,  of  the  martyrs,  and  whenever  there 
is  a  social  crisis  then  we  have  our  work  set  out 
before  us.  No  need  to  talk  any  more  about  the 
infinitude  of  virtue  or  the  infinite  depths  of  evil. 
All  the  workers  in  their  quiet  ways  know  that  they 
are  dealing  with  infinite  things,  the  very  greatness 
of  it  that  comes  out  in  spiritual  life.  We  want 
to  have  a  religion  that  shall  come  to  these  men 
and  women,  to  ourselves  in  our  work,  with  the 
sense  of  hope,  of  love,  of  courage. 

Let  me  close  just  with  a  word  from  one  of  the 
greatest  of  the  social  workers  and  preachers  of 
the  church,  Chrysostom.  He  pleads  for  the  man 
in  the  midst  of  a  social  crisis  who  has  a  clear,  dis- 
interested love  of  truth : 

"  Truth  stands  forth  unveiled  for  all  that  will  be- 
hold her  beauty;  she  seeks  no  concealment,  dreads  no 
danger,  trembles  at  no  plots,  desires  not  glory  from 
the  many,  is  accountable  to  no  mortal  thing,  but  stands 
above  them  all,  is  the  object  of  ten  thousand  secret 
plots,  yet  remaineth  unconquerable,  and  guards  as  in 
a  sure  fortress  those  who  fly  to  her  by  her  own  ex- 
ceeding might,  who  avoids  secret  lurking  places,  and 
setteth  what  is  hers  before  all  men.  And  this  Christ 
conversing  with  Pilate  declared,  when  He  said,  '  I 
ever  taught  openly,  and  in  secret  have  I  said  nothing.' 
As  He  spake  then,  so  he  acted  now,  for,  '  After  this,' 
saith  the  Evangelist,  '  He  went  forth  and  his  disciples 
into  the  land  of  Judea,  and  there  he  tarried  with  them 


THE  CHURCH  AND  SOCIAL  UNREST      49 

and  baptized.'  At  the  feasts  He  went  up  to  the  City 
to  set  forth  in  the  midst  of  them  His  doctrines,  and 
the  help  of  His  miracles ;  but  after  the  feasts  were 
over,  He  often  went  to  Jordan,  because  many  ran  to- 
gether there.  For  He  ever  chose  the  most  crowded 
places,  not  from  any  love  of  show  or  vain  glory,  but 
because  He  desired  to  afford  His  help  to  the  greatest 
number  of  the  people." 


SOCIAL  SERVICE  AGENCIES 

ELMER  S.  FORBES 

Secretary,  Department  of  Social  and  Public  Serv- 
ice, American  Unitarian  Association 

Nothing  shows  more  clearly  the  changed  atti- 
tude of  the  church  towards  what  are  called  social 
questions  than  the  presence  of  so  many  church  peo- 
ple at  a  conference  like  this.  A  century  ago 
scarcely  any  one  would  have  dreamed  of  convening 
the  churches  to  consider  their  relation  to  the  social 
unrest  or  their  concern  in  the  moralizing  of  busi- 
ness. Such  topics  were  beyond  the  range  of  their 
interest  and  outside  the  sphere  of  their  direct  in- 
fluence. I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  it  is  possible 
to  draw  any  hard  and  fast  line  for  that  day  be- 
tween the  religious  and  the  secular,  and  say  that 
everything  on  one  side  fell  within  the  purview  of 
the  church  and  that  everything  on  the  other  side 
was  beyond  it,  for  that  would  not  be  true. 

The  division  between  the  religious  and  the  sec- 
ular was  not  so  much  a  line  as  it  was  a  neutral 
zone,  and  within  this  zone  there  was  room  for  much 
difference  of  opinion  and  practice.  What  one 
person  regarded  as  entirely  secular  another  looked 
upon  as  so  clearly  religious  in  its  implications  as 

to  be  properly  a  subject  for  the  pulpit  or  the 

50 


SOCIAL  SERVICE  AGENCIES          51 

conference  meeting.  Nevertheless,  when  all  is  said 
there  was  a  pretty  clear  distinction  between  that 
part  of  life  which  belonged  to  the  church  and 
that  which  belonged  to  the  world.  We  are  re- 
minded of  the  colloquy  between  the  deacon  who 
was  a  grocer  and  his  boy  in  the  store.  "  John, 
have  you  watered  the  milk?  "  "  Yes,  sir."  "Have 
you  sanded  the  sugar?"  "Yes,  sir."  "Have 
you  put  the  chalk  in  the  flour?  "  "  Yes,  sir." 
"  Then  come  in  to  prayers." 

Now,  all  this  is  changed.  Life  in  all  its  aspects, 
business,  politics,  society,  international  relations, 
is  seen  to  have  its  ethical  side,  and  the  church 
is  concerned  with  them  all.  This  is  due  to  two 
causes.  In  the  first  place  all  the  world  has  had 
a  quickening  of  conscience,  and  together  with  it 
the  conscience  of  the  church  has  become  more 
sensitive.  Note  what  a  change  there  has  been  re- 
specting practices  which  a  few  years  ago  no  one 
questioned  at  all.  We  have  been  amused  to  see 
how  earnestly  the  great  political  parties  have  been 
trying  to  escape  the  charge  that  in  1904  their 
treasuries  had  been  filled  largely  by  the  generosity 
of  great  corporations.  To-day  it  is  a  reproach 
to  any  party  to  have  its  sinews  of  war  supplied 
by  the  corporations,  but  eight  years  ago  compar- 
atively few  people  questioned  the  propriety  of 
such  gifts.  This  is  only  one  example  of  the  way 
in  which  a  more  sensitive  ethical  sense  is  raising 
the  common  standards  of  honor.  Plenty  more 
will  occur  to  everyone. 


52 

Then  we  see  to-day  the  close  relation  between 
all  social  problems  as  they  were  not  seen  in  the 
earlier  time.  Always  the  church  has  taken  a 
lively  interest  in  such  questions  of  direct  personal 
conduct  as  are  defined  by  the  Ten  Commandments. 
On  the  plain,  unmistakable  injunctions  of  the 
moral  law  the  church  has  spoken  with  no  uncer- 
tain voice.  It  has  stood  against  theft,  impurity 
of  life,  slander  of  another's  fair  name,  irreverence 
and  many  such  like  sins  all  down  through  its  his- 
tory. Now  it  is  extending  the  field  of  its  activity 
because  it  is  coming  to  see  that  every  great  social 
question  is  at  bottom  a  moral  question  and  subject 
to  the  operation  of  the  moral  law. 

Take  the  homes  of  the  people,  for  instance. 
It  is  of  immense  importance  that  they  shall  be 
clean  and  sweet  and  pure  for  they  are  the  corner 
stone  of  the  Republic.  Here  good  habits  are 
formed  and  character  is  established,  patriotism 
is  taught  and  boys  and  girls  are  trained  to  be  good 
men  and  women  and  good  citizens.  But  if  the 
homes  are  dark,  dirty,  unsanitary  and  unhealthy 
most  unfavorable  will  be  their  influence.  Out  of 
such  dwellings  the  saloons  and  the  brothels  are  re- 
cruited, here  vice  and  crime  flourish,  and  they  are 
the  cause  of  the  great  expenditure  for  our  penal 
system  and  for  hospitals,  refuges  and  charities 
of  every  kind.  In  view  of  what  the  church  is 
trying  to  do  for  the  upbuilding  of  humanity  the 
housing  question  becomes  of  the  utmost  concern. 
It  is  learning  that  it  cannot  hope  to  deal  success- 


SOCIAL  SERVICE  AGENCIES          53 

fully  with  any  of  these  problems  of  conduct  and 
character  until  the  people  whom  it  is  trying  to 
reach  are  living  in  a  healthy  environment,  and 
with  the  coming  of  this  knowledge  the  church  has 
been  led  into  the  very  heart  of  the  social  ques- 
tion. 

This,  then,  is  why  the  interests  of  the  church 
have  so  broadened  and  extended.  It  has  felt  the 
quickening  of  the  social  conscience,  and  has 
come  to  see  that  the  ethical  problems  which  have 
been  its  age-long  concern  are  inter-related  with 
every  other  kind  of  social  question,  so  that  to 
deal  effectively  with  what  it  has  always  considered 
its  own  peculiar  field  of  work  it  must  take  every- 
thing else  into  account.  The  church  now  sees 
that  nothing  human  is  foreign  to  it,  and  it  feels 
its  larger  responsibility  as  it  has  not  done  in  the 
past. 

This  involves  a  change  in  method,  a  change  in 
procedure,  but  in  saying  this  I  do  not  wish  to  be 
understood  as  desiring  in  the  least  to  abandon  that 
which  it  has  been  accustomed  to  regard  as  the 
essential  feature  of  church  life  and  activity.  I 
wish  to  repeat  here  what  I  have  said  before,  that 
"  as  the  churches  always  have,  so  they  always  must 
devote  much  thought  and  effort  to  the  upbuilding 
of  individuals  in  personal  character.  The  services 
of  public  worship  must  always  be  sustained ;  the 
Sunday  School,  which  is  the  place  where  the  major- 
ity of  children  get  their  religious  education  and 
training,  must  be  strengthened  and  developed;  the 


54          SOCIAL  SERVICE  AGENCIES 

missionary  spirit  must  be  cultivated  and  intensified. 
Let  no  one  think  that  there  is  any  disposition  to 
let  these  institutions  or  activities  fall  into  decay, 
for  if  this  should  happen  the  church  would  die. 
The  present  duty  is  not  to  let  go  of  these  old  and 
well  established  and  necessary  forms  of  church 
activity,  but  to  take  on  new  work  which  is  equally 
important  and  necessary,  and  which  has  a  vital 
connection  with  the  older  and  more  familiar  func- 
tions." 

This  new  work  includes  an  extension  of  the 
social  rescue  work  in  which  the  church  has  always 
been  interested,  constructive  social  work  which 
shall  prevent  or  render  impossible  much  of  the 
distress  and  misery  which  are  now  so  common,  the 
consideration  of  whatever  concerns  the  welfare 
of  the  local  community,  and  the  moralizing  of  busi- 
ness so  that  the  relations  between  employers  and 
employed  shall  be  harmonized  and  both  be  filled 
with  something  of  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  and 
devotion  which  has  made  medicine  and  teaching 
and  the  ministry  such  noble  professions. 

All  this  together  is  a  pretty  large  undertaking, 
and  the  question  at  once  arises,  Who  is  going  to  do 
this  work,  who  is  going  to  lay  it  out  and  supervise 
it,  and  when  are  all  the  many  details  connected 
with  it  going  to  be  discussed  and  settled?  Well, 
the  only  agents  upon  whom  the  church  can  call 
for  this  service  are  the  people  who  belong  to  it, 
who  compose  it.  It  is  upon  us  that  the  responsi- 
bility rests  for  seeing  that  this  work  is  done  and 


SOCIAL  SERVICE  AGENCIES          55 

done  right.  I  do  not  wonder  that  we  shrink  from 
some  of  it ;  I  do  not  wonder  that  we  beg  to  be  ex- 
cused and  say  we  have  no  time,  or  do  not  know 
how,  or  anything  else  which  enables  us  to  get  out 
of  it. 

The  trouble  is  it  does  not  cost  us  anything  to 
be  churchmen,  and  so  we  do  not  want  to  fulfill  our 
obligation  as  churchmen.  In  the  early  ages  it 
did,  and  a  man  did  not  leave  his  friends  and 
identify  himself  with  the  church  unless  he  was 
convinced  that  in  it  was  the  way  of  truth  and  life ; 
in  some  heathen  lands  to-day  one  does  not  do  this 
unless  he  is  ready  to  endure  privation  and  hard- 
ship and  even  the  sword.  Now  that  the  profession 
of  Christianity  seems  likely  once  more  to  cost 
something,  even  though  it  is  only  time  and  effort, 
we  may  expect  that  the  churches  will  lose  some  of 
their  half-hearted  members,  but  their  places  will 
be  more  than  supplied  by  those  to  whom  the  call 
to  service  will  come  with  a  solemn  appeal  which 
cannot  be  resisted. 

Prayer  and  service  are  to  be  the  life  of  the  twen- 
tieth century  Christian,  prayer  and  service  will  be 
the  double  function  of  the  Christian  Church.  On 
Sunday  morning  it  will  continue  to  meet  for  wor- 
ship, as  it  has  met  for  almost  two  thousand  years, 
to  ponder  the  great  themes  of  spiritual  truth  and 
spiritual  life,  and  woe  will  come  to  it  if  it  ever 
turns  aside  from  this  its  appointed  task,  but  I 
believe  the  time  will  come  when  on  some  other  day 
in  the  week  it  will  meet  for  work  with  equal  reg- 


56          SOCIAL  SERVICE  AGENCIES 

ularity  and  with  an  equal  sense  of  high  and  holy 
duty. 

Then,  for  instance,  the  church  will  gather  to 
consider  the  needs  of  the  community.  It  is  within 
the  bounds  of  possibility  that  all  the  churches  in 
a  town  or  city  will  meet  for  the  same  purpose  at 
the  same  time,  as  they  have  been  accustomed  to 
do  all  over  New  England  on  prayer  meeting  night, 
but  to  make  such  meetings  effective  there  must  be 
some  little  machinery  devised.  The  parish  com- 
mittee, or  prudential  committee,  or  whatever  it  is 
called,  looks  after  the  finances  of  the  parish ;  the 
guild  or  the  union  enlists  the  interest  of  the  young 
people;  the  missionary  work  is  served  by  the  alli- 
ance or  the  women's  auxiliary  or  some  such  society ; 
so  to  handle  the  social  work  of  the  church  and  to  see 
that  it  is  wisely  directed  there  should  be  a  social 
service  committee. 

This  should  be  a  committee  of  the  parish,  chosen 
at  the  annual  parish  meeting  with  as  much  care 
as  are  the  members  of  any  other  important  com- 
mittee. You  put  men  and  women  of  sound  judg- 
ment and  high  standing  in  the  community  at  the 
head  of  the  business  affairs  of  the  church.  The 
social  service  committee  demands  a  membership  of 
equally  high  standing.  Sometimes  it  is  formed 
by  taking  the  heads  of  the  other  organizations, 
like  the  chairman  of  the  parish  committee,  the  pres- 
ident of  the  alliance,  etc.,  and  calling  them  the 
social  service  committee.  This  satisfies  the  re- 
quirements of  personal  character  and  influence,  but 


SOCIAL  SERVICE  AGENCIES          67 

these  are  not  enough  in  this  case.  There  should 
be  in  addition  an  enthusiasm  for  the  common  wel- 
fare, a  passion  for  service.  If  these  qualities  can 
be  found  among  the  officials  named  all  well  and 
good,  but  not  all  of  them  are  likely  to  be  socially 
minded,  and  the  presence  of  any  such  on  the 
committee  will  tend  to  destroy  its  usefulness. 

In  every  church,  however,  there  is  usually  to  be 
found  a  group  of  people  who  spend  their  lives  in 
doing  good  and  out  of  this  group  the  social  serv- 
ice committee  can  be  selected.  This  committee 
should  plan  and  direct  the  social  work  of  the 
church,  but  it  should  be  remembered  that  of  itself 
the  committee  can  do  little.  The  great  agency  by 
which  the  work  is  to  be  done  is  the  congregation 
itself,  the  men  and  women  and  children  who  con- 
stitute the  membership  of  the  church.  The  com- 
mittee simply  lays  out  the  work  so  that  it  may 
be  done  efficiently  with  the  least  expenditure  of 
time  and  labor. 

It  will  consider  the  Church  School,  which  is  a 
name  that  stands  for  much  more  than  Sunday 
School,  and  will,  with  the  best  information  and 
advice  it  can  secure,  devise  a  course  of  instruction 
and  training  in  service  which  will  graduate  the 
child  into  the  larger  life  of  the  church  and  the 
world  possessed  of  a  keen  sense  of  social  obliga- 
tion and  with  well-established  habits  of  service.  It 
will  observe  the  tides  of  moral  earnestness  and  effort 
which  are  setting  through  the  world  and  will  see 
what  the  church  as  an  organization  can  do  to  help 


58          SOCIAL  SERVICE  AGENCIES 

them  forward.  It  will  study  the  closer  needs  of 
its  own  community  and  will  find  a  place  where  ev- 
ery person  can  work  according  to  his  ability  and 
strength.  Every  member  of  a  church  should 
pledge  himself  to  give  a  certain  definite  amount 
of  time  each  week  to  some  specific  service. 

The  weekly  meetings  of  the  church  will  be  the 
occasion  for  reports  and  counsel  and  discussion ; 
for  reports  from  individuals  concerning  the  work 
which  they  are  doing,  for  advice  as  to  the  meet- 
ing of  difficulties,  for  discussion  of  new  enterprises 
for  the  common  good. 

I  have  said  that  it  is  possible  that  all  the 
churches  in  a  given  town  may  be  assembled  at  the 
same  time  for  the  same  purpose.  When  such  a 
thing  has  come  to  pass  the  time  is  ripe  for  a  church 
federation  for  social  service.  Each  church  will 
have  its  own  committee  to  stimulate  and  guide  its 
own  people,  but  over  all  should  be  a  general  com- 
mittee of  social  welfare,  formed  perhaps  from  the 
officers  of  the  committees  of  the  different  churches. 
Its  function  will  be  to  plan  the  work  of  the  town 
as  a  whole,  giving  due  attention  to  the  lines  of 
effort  upon  which  it  seems  likely  that  the  churches 
will  act:  social  rescue  work,  constructive  social 
work,  the  common  good  of  the  commuity  and  the 
humanizing  of  business  relations.  It  will  appor- 
tion the  work  to  be  done  to  the  respective  churches, 
will  hold  public  meetings  and  will  endeavor  to 
shape  and  mold  public  sentiment  to  the  attain- 
ment of  the  highest  ends. 


SOCIAL  SERVICE  AGENCIES          59 

What  all  this  new  Christian  work  may  mean  to 
those  who  throw  themselves  into  it  with  enthusi- 
asm has  been  vividly  set  forth  by  Charles  R. 
Brown  in,  "  The  Social  Message  of  the  Modern 
Pulpit,"  where  he  details  an  interesting  conver- 
sation he  once  had  on  the  subject.  "  I  shall  al- 
ways remember,"  he  writes,  "  a  serious  talk  with 
an  intelligent  Christian  layman  in  an  eastern  city. 
His  father  and  his  grandfather  had  been  Congre- 
gational ministers,  and  he  was  himself  an  active 
member  of  one  of  the  churches  there.  He  enjoyed 
regularly  and  gratefully  the  ministrations  of  one 
of  the  most  spiritually  minded  pastors  in  that 
city. 

"  He  was  telling  of  the  Christian  work  in  which 
he  had  been  engaged  the  winter  before.  He  had 
been  working  with  a  group  of  men  to  compel  cer- 
tain landlords  to  make  the  tenement  houses  they 
owned  sanitary.  Together  these  men  had  also 
been  securing  the  enforcement  of  the  law  against 
certain  infamous  dens  of  vice  which  were  a  con- 
stant menace  to  the  morals  of  the  poor  boys  and 
girls  who  lived  in  the  vicinity.  They  had  been 
accomplishing  something  in  securing  employment 
for  men  out  of  work,  for  it  was  during  the  era 
of  hard  times.  They  had  succeeded  in  securing, 
through  a  free  market,  a  cheaper  and  more  whole- 
some food  supply  for  the  poor.  He  had  been  co- 
operating in  the  work  of  a  certain  social  settle- 
ment which  supervised  a  number  of  boys'  clubs 
and  sewing  schools  and  workingmen's  resorts, 


60          SOCIAL  SERVICE  AGENCIES 

bringing  cheer  and  hope  to  hundreds  of  neglected 
lives. 

"  He  had  found  a  deep  satisfaction  in  the  part 
he  had  taken  in  it  all,  and  as  he  concluded  his  nar- 
rative, he  leaned  across  the  table  and  said  with  the 
utmost  earnestness :  '  You  know  I  get  nearer  my 
God  in  working  with  those  struggling  people 
down  there  than  I  ever  do  in  our  church  prayer- 
meeting.'  He  was  a  man  who  could  and  did  take 
an  effective  hand  in  the  church  prayer  meeting, 
too,  but  he  had  found  his  way  into  a  deeper  real- 
ization of  the  divine  Spirit  in  his  unselfish  service 
to  the  needs  of  that  section  of  the  city,  than  in 
the  usual  conventional  efforts  after  spirituality." 

What  this  new  life  of  service  will  mean  to  the 
church  as  an  organization  will  be  registered  not 
perhaps  in  larger  numbers,  but  certainly  in  a 
closer  union  of  hearts,  in  a  deeper  harmony  of 
spirit,  in  a  larger  and  ever  increasing  influence  in 
the  world  outside,  for  it  is  just  as  true  of  a  church 
as  it  is  of  a  man  that  if  it  lives  for  itself  it  will 
lose  its  life;  but  if  it  forgets  itself,  sinks  its  life 
in  the  larger  service  of  humanity,  it  will  find  its 
own  life  again,  stronger,  nobler,  more  powerful 
than  before. 


THE    SOCIAL   SERVICE    COMMITTEE 
IN  ACTION 

MRS.  ANNIE  M.  CHESLEY 

Secretary,  Social  Service  Committee,  First  Parish 
Church,   Cambridge 

A  church  is  an  assemblage  of  people  united  to- 
gether for  the  worship  of  God  and  the  service  of 
Man.  We  are  told  in  John's  gospel  that  God  is 
spirit  and  they  that  worship  him  must  worship 
him  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  Do  we  not  also  believe 
that  man  is  essential  spirit  and  that  to  serve  him 
we  must  needs  render  that  service  in  the  right 
spirit  and  with  a  knowledge  of  the  truth?  In 
other  words,  is  it  not  as  necessary  to  have  as  high 
a  standard  for  the  service  of  man  as  the  gospel 
tells  us  we  need  to  have  for  the  love  and  worship 
of  God?  The  spirit  and  the  truth,  or  sympathy 
and  knowledge,  therefore,  are  what  is  required  for 
both  departments  of  the  Christian  life. 

For  centuries,  indeed  up  to  within  a  compara- 
tively few  years,  the  churches  were  not  only  the 
centers  for  religious  teaching  and  inspiration,  but 
they  also  carried  on  whatever  charitable  and  phil- 
anthropic work  was  done  in  the  community.  Al- 
most all  the  secular  institutions  for  charitable  work 

have  been  organized  within  the  last  forty  or  fifty 

61 


62        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

years.  This  is  said  to  be  a  humanitarian  age.  It 
is  impossible  to  keep  track  of  all  the  movements, 
local  and  national,  that  are  now  being  organized 
for  the  prevention  and  relief  of  distress.  Indeed, 
it  is  difficult  to  keep  in  touch  with  all  that  is  de- 
veloping or  beginning  anew  in  one's  own  commu- 
nity. 

There  seems  to  be  a  reaction  in  two  directions. 
On  the  one  hand,  social  workers  are  looking  more 
and  more  to  the  churches  for  sympathetic  co- 
operation, personal  service,  and  funds  to  help  carry 
on  the  work  of  their  various  departments.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  church  is  awakening  to  the  fact 
that  if  it  desires  to  enter  more  fully  the  arena  of 
material  helpfulness  to  the  community,  it  must 
adopt  the  same  standards  of  efficiency  as  those 
maintained  by  the  best  secular  agencies.  The  de- 
sire for  effective  helpfulness  on  the  side  of  the 
churches  is  manifesting  itself  in  various  ways. 
First,  there  is  the  institutional  church,  which  con- 
ducts almost  every  form  of  social  activity  rtntlun 
itself.  Another  form  of  church  activity  is  that 
illustrated  by  the  Third  Presbyterian  Church  of 
Rochester,  New  York,  which  is  trying  to  do  most 
enthusiastically  and  effectively  regular  charity 
organization  work,  in  order  that  its  members  may 
understand  from  the  study  and  solution  of  indi- 
vidual problems  the  larger  needs  of  the  community. 
We  have  read  with  great  interest  about  the  unique 
and  vital  work  done  by  Unity  Church  of  Mont- 
clair,  New  Jersey;  and  then  there  are  churches, 


THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION        63 

like  the  First  Parish  Church  in  Cambridge,  which 
are  trying  to  work  out  a  form  of  mutual  helpful- 
ness through  what  is  known  as  "  Social  Service 
Committees." 

It  is  the  story  of  the  work  of  the  Social  Service 
Committee  of  this  church  that  I  am  asked  to  tell 
you  to-day.  The  committee  was  organized  eleven 
years  ago  in  Dr.  Crothers'  home  on  Oxford  Street. 
It  first  consisted  of  twenty  members.  The  mem- 
bership has  since  been  increased  to  twenty-five  per- 
sons, all  members  of  the  congregation.  Each  of 
these  members  represents  at  least  one  undenom- 
inational organization  for  social  betterment. 

It  is  difficult  to  realize  the  Cambridge  of  1902. 
With  no  medical  inspection  of  schools  —  no  school 
nurses  —  no  vacation  schools  —  no  supervised 
playgrounds  —  no  Visiting  Nursing  Association 
—  no  Anti-Tuberculosis  Association  —  no  Dental 
Clinic  —  no  Hospital  Social  Service  —  and  no 
Housing  Association.  It  is  a  mystery  how  any 
of  us  born  previous  to  that  date  ever  lived  to  grow 
up !  It  was  in  this  dark  age  of  our  social  evolu- 
tion that  the  Social  Service  Committee  of  the 
First  Parish  in  Cambridge  was  born.  I  have  read 
the  records  of  the  meetings  of  that  early  period. 
They  show  that  the  policy  of  the  committee  has 
changed  very  little  during  these  ten  years.  Then, 
as  now,  the  predominant  desire  was  one  of  help- 
fulness. 

The  committee  has  kept  in  touch  with  other 
organizations  through  reports  from  its  members, 


64        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

two  or  more  members  reporting  at  each  meeting. 
The  congregation  has  been  kept  informed  of  many 
important  local  and  national  movements  through 
representatives  of  organizations  who  have  been  in- 
vited  to  speak  after  the  Sunday  morning  service. 
There  are  few  subjects  relating  to  social  welfare 
that  have  claimed  the  attention  of  the  public  within 
the  last  ten  years,  that  have  not  been  discussed 
more  or  less  in  detail  by  the  committee.  Even  a 
list  of  these  subjects  would  prove  wearisome.  It 
has  therefore  seemed  best  to  give  a  few  illustrations 
that  are  typical  of  our  work  as  a  whole,  hoping 
that  they  will  reveal  somewhat  the  purpose  and 
methods  of  the  committee. 

One  of  the  first  acts  of  the  committee  was  an 
effort  made  to  ascertain  to  what  extent  the  congre- 
gation was  already  interested  in  social  and  charita- 
ble work ;  also  how  many  were  willing  to  be  called 
upon  for  further  service.  As  a  result  of  this  can- 
vass, it  was  found  that  about  one  hundred  and  fifty 
were  already  identified  with  about  forty-six  local, 
Boston,  State  and  National  associations.  About 
fifteen  stated  that  they  might  be  called  upon  to 
render  some  form  of  volunteer  service. 

As  a  committee,  we  do  not  undertake  to  carry 
out  any  social  programme.  Members  of  the  com- 
mittee as  citizens  do  what  they  can  individually, 
and  through  other  organizations,  to  help  promote 
wise  efforts  for  social  betterment.  There  has  been 
one  exception,  however,  to  this  policy.  The  com- 
mittee has  continued  to  assume  direct  personal 


THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION        65 

and  financial  responsibility  for  the  Saturday  morn- 
ing Sewing  Class  at  the  East  End  Christian  Union. 
This  class  was  begun  when  the  committee  was  but 
two  months  old,  at  the  request  of  the  late  Dean 
Wright,  then  the  President  of  the  Union.  Owing 
to  certain  peculiar  local  conditions,  it  has  seemed 
wise  to  continue  this  work  as  at  first  started. 

My  third  illustration  shows  how  the  committee 
was  of  service  at  a  time  of  special  emergency.  In 
1903,  at  the  time  of  the  coal  famine,  reports  came 
to  the  committee  that  the  office  force  of  the  Asso- 
ciated Charities  was  not  equal  to  meeting  all  the 
extra  work  required  of  it.  After  securing  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  real  conditions,  the  whole  situation  was 
reported  to  the  congregation.  They  were  told  of 
the  sufferings  of  those  who  were  not  financially 
able  to  pay  the  high  prices  for  the  fuel  that  could 
be  obtained;  the  plans  of  the  newly-appointed 
Citizens'  Committee  to  work  through  the  Associ- 
ated Charities ;  and  the  necessity,  therefore,  of 
extra  help  at  the  office  to  meet  the  emergency. 
Sufficient  money  was  raised  by  a  special  collection 
to  purchase  a  typewriter  and  to  pay  the  salary  of 
a  stenographer.  It  can  readily  be  seen  that  the 
desire  of  the  Social  Service  Committee  to  help, 
carried  out  in  this  way,  brought  about  a  two-fold 
result.  First,  it  proved  that  the  services  of  a 
stenographer  were  a  permanent  necessity  to  the 
regular  work  of  the  Associated  Charities  office. 
The  second,  and  by  far  the  most  important,  result 
was  that  it  demonstrated  to  at  least  one  congre- 


66        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

gation  in  the  city  the  value  and  importance  of  the 
Associated  Charities,  not  only  as  an  organization 
to  study  and  plan  for  individual  and  community 
needs  week  by  week,  but  as  the  organization  best 
fitted  in  the  community  to  help  meet  special  emer- 
gencies. 

The  following  illustrates  another  form  of  com- 
munity service.  A  member  of  the  committee  who 
was  also  a  collector  for  the  Home  Savings  Society 
reported  at  one  of  our  regular  meetings  that  on 
visiting  a  school  in  East  Cambridge,  she  had  seen 
many  feeble-minded  children,  some  over  fourteen 
years  of  age,  really  moral  imbeciles,  who  were  in 
closest  association  with  the  younger  and  normal 
children,  and  that  there  was  great  need  of  more 
effective  inspection  of  school  children.  The 
Chairman  of  the  Social  Service  Committee  was 
asked  to  confer  with  the  Mayor,  who  was  found  to 
be  most  favorably  inclined  to  the  appointment  of 
a  school  nurse.  After  a  careful  canvass  of  the 
situation,  the  Cambridge  Visiting  Nursing  Asso- 
ciation was  authorized  to  make  a  formal  offer  to 
the  Board  of  Health  to  pay  for  the  services  of  a 
school  nurse  for  a  trial  period,  the  services  of  said 
nurse  to  be  at  the  disposal  of  the  Board  of  Health. 
In  cooperation  with  the  Visiting  Nursing  Associa- 
tion, the  Social  Service  Committee  met  the  expenses 
until,  a  year  later,  the  Board  of  Health,  which  had 
come  to  realize  the  value  and  necessity  of  her  work, 
assumed  the  entire  responsibility.  There  arc  now 
two  nurses,  and  more  will  be  provided  as  soon  as 


the  finances  of  the  city  will  allow.  In  this  instance 
we  see  that  although  the  committee  took  the  ini- 
tiative, it  worked  through  the  organization  in  the 
community  best  fitted  to  meet  the  need. 

The  committee  has  made  one  direct  contribu- 
tion that  has  proved  of  service  to  all  social  workers 
and  Cambridge  citizens  generally.  For  some  years 
previous  to  1907,  the  need  of  a  small  Directory 
of  Charities  had  been  realized  by  the  Associated 
Charities  and  others,  but  time  and  special  funds 
to  undertake  the  work  seemed  always  lacking.  In 
1907,  Mrs.  Cannon  and  Miss  Jackson,  two  mem- 
bers of  our  Social  Service  Committee,  after  an 
infinite  amount  of  work  and  study,  published,  under 
the  auspices  and  at  the  expense  of  the  committee, 
a  little  book,  entitled  "  Social  Welfare  in  Cam- 
bridge: A  Handbook  for  Citizens."  The  Table 
of  Contents  reads  as  follows :  "  The  City  and  the 
Citizen ;  Public  Health ;  Education ;  Industrial 
Welfare ;  the  Law  and  the  Courts ;  Social  and  Re- 
ligious Institutions ;  Clubs  and  Civic  Associations ; 
Temperance ;  Provident  Institutions ;  Public  Re- 
lief; Private  Relief;  and  Homes."  It  was  also 
indexed.  At  first  a  few  copies  were  sold,  but  later 
they  were  distributed  freely  to  anyone  who  wished 
them. 

A  little  over  a  year  ago,  at  the  suggestion  of 
Dr.  Crothers,  the  committee  decided  to  make  some 
effort  to  reach  the  young  people  of  the  congrega- 
tion, and  possibly  some  of  the  new  members,  and 
to  help  create  a  larger  interest  in  the  work  of  the 


68        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

community.  It  was  arranged  that  the  Secretary 
of  the  committee  be  at  the  Parish  House  every 
Thursday  afternoon  to  meet  those  who  might  wish 
to  volunteer  for  some  form  of  social  service.  We 
then  began  to  realize  that  in  order  to  make  intelli- 
gent suggestions,  we  must  needs  have  a  more  ade- 
quate comprehension  of  the  work  that  was  being 
done  throughout  the  city.  This  desire  led  to  the 
preparation  of  a  Social  Exhibit,  which  aimed  to 
give  in  graphic  form  the  purposes  and  the  needs 
of  twenty-six  institutions  and  centers  for  social 
welfare  in  Cambridge. 

Gathering  the  facts  for  this  Exhibit  was  a  most 
interesting  and  stimulating  bit  of  work.  Each 
organization  cooperated  most  cordially.  A  few 
prepared  their  own.  The  majority  sent  a  care- 
fully-prepared statement  to  the  Parish  House,  and 
we  had  the  lettering  done.  When  completed,  the 
Exhibit  was  first  used  at  a  reception  given  to  the 
congregation,  when  representatives  in  the  church 
of  each  organization  stood  ready  to  answer  ques- 
tions and  give  additional  information.  During 
the  month  that  the  Exhibit  hung  in  the  Parish 
House  parlors  all  the  various  committees  of  the 
church  met,  and  the  Cambridge  Union  of  Social 
Workers  were  invited  to  view  what  they  themselves 
had  so  materially  helped  to  prepare.  The  Ex- 
hibit looks  now  rather  battered  and  worn,  as  it 
has  traveled  from  church  to  church  in  Cambridge. 

Although  it  was  in  no  sense  intended  to  serve 
as  an  investigation  of  Cambridge  conditions,  nev- 


THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION        69 

ertheless,  the  numerous  consultations  with  people 
who  were  trying  to  do  constructive  and  preventive 
work  along  different  lines,  did  actually  reveal  a 
great  many  facts  concerning  general  conditions. 
It  was  prepared  to  show  what  were  the  funda- 
mental aims  of  each  organization  and  what  each 
conceived  to  be  its  greatest  needs. 

We  know  of  about  thirty-five  volunteers  who 
have  been  secured  since  then.  Some  have  become 
directors,  some  committee  members,  some  club  and 
class  leaders,  some  Home  Savings  collectors,  etc. 
Interest  has  also  been  stimulated  in  the  various  ac- 
tivities of  the  church  —  the  Sunday  School,  the 
Women's  Alliance,  and  the  Sewing  Society.  It 
may  be  necessary  to  state,  for  the  information  of 
those  who  are  not  familiar  with  the  work  of  the 
First  Parish  Church,  that  although  it  is  not  in  any 
sense  an  institutional  church,  the  Parish  House  is 
open  every  day  from  nine  to  five,  principally  for 
the  work  of  the  Paine  Fund,  administered  by  the 
Standing  Committee  of  the  church.  The  Agent 
for  the  Standing  Committee  in  connection  with  the 
Paine  Fund  has  also  been  for  a  short  time  the  Sec- 
retary of  the  Social  Service  Committee,  and  thus 
becomes  a  connecting  link  helping  to  unify  all  the 
social  activities  of  the  church. 

I  have  selected  as  my  seventh  and  last  illustra- 
tion of  the  methods  of  the  committee  the  way  in 
which  a  special  appeal  was  met.  We  are  not  in 
any  way  a  "  Charity  Endorsement  Committee,"  as 
both  the  Cambridge  and  Boston  Associated  Char- 


70        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

ities  have  committees  that  perform  that  service  for 
the  community.  But  about  four  weeks  ago,  a 
respectable  colored  woman  came  to  the  Parish 
House  asking  for  financial  assistance  to  help  pay 
the  interest  and  taxes  on  a  house  that  had  been 
purchased  for  a  home  for  colored  men  and  women 
and  a  temporary  home  for  colored  working  girls. 
It  had  been  incorporated  under  the  name  of  "  The 
Pentecostal  Home  Association."  The  Trustees,  a 
small  group  of  colored  women,  had  not  been  able 
to  use  the  house  for  the  avowed  purposes,  since 
they  had  to  realize  what  income  they  could  from 
renting  rooms  in  order  to  keep  the  interest  on  the 
mortgage  and  the  taxes  paid.  These  honest  and 
well-meaning  women  were  heart-broken  at  the 
thought  that  if  the  interest  on  the  mortgage  were 
not  paid  —  and  they  were  much  in  arrears  —  all 
the  sacrifices  of  years  would  be  lost. 

The  committee  thought  that  there  was  probably 
little  need  of  such  an  institution,  but  it  also  real- 
ized that  it  did  not  have  the  necessary  facts  con- 
cerning the  needs  of  our  colored  people  in  Cam- 
bridge on  which  to  base  a  decision.  A  committee 
of  three  was  appointed  to  study  the  situation  and 
report  at  the  next  meeting,  December  15th.  The 
results  of  this  study,  whatever  they  may  be,  will  be 
passed  on  to  the  Trustees  of  "  The  Pentecostal 
Home  Association,"  and  they  will  be  given  intelli- 
gent and  sympathetic  advice  as  to  the  wisdom  or 
unwisdom  of  continuing  their  efforts. 

I  hope  I  have  succeeded  through  these  illustra- 


THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION        71 

tions  in  exemplifying  not  only  the  methods  of  the 
committee  but  its  threefold  purpose.  These  pur- 
poses are: 

First,  To  learn  from  each  other  of  the  progress 
of  all  the  social  interests  represented  by  members 
of  the  committee. 

Second,  To  keep  the  congregation  informed  of 
community  needs  and  the  best  ways  of  meeting 
them. 

Third,  To  stimulate  and  strengthen  the  secular 
organizations  of  the  community,  so  that  they  and 
we  may  have  a  growing  realization  of  the  relation 
of  the  work  of  each  to  all,  and  all  to  the  commu- 
nity. 


THE    SOCIAL    SERVICE    COMMITTEE    IN 
ACTION 

REV.  EDGAR  S.  WIERS 
Minister,   Unity  Church,  Montclair,  N.  J. 

The  Christian  Register  told  us  a  few  years  ago 
about  the  small  boy  dressed  in  some  costume  of  the 
olden  time,  who  in  the  midst  of  one  of  the  historic 
pageants  in  an  English  town  was  found  astray 
and  tearfully  complaining,  "  I've  lost  my  epoch." 
I  have  lost  my  epoch  in  coming  in  here  under 
the  head  of  "  The  Social  Service  Committee  in 
Action,"  inasmuch  as  I  am  to  speak  rather  of  what 
one  church  is  doing.  But  increasingly  in  the  work 
that  that  one  church  is  doing,  the  need  of  a  Social 
Service  Committee  to  give  it  direction,  to  give  it 
guidance,  to  give  it  unity,  to  give  it  continuance 
and  stability,  becomes  apparent,  though  how  to 
constitute  that  committee  is  a  problem  we  have  not 
solved  as  has  been  done  in  the  First  Parish  of 
Cambridge.  We  like  to  emphasize  right  along  to 
those  of  our  own  people  who  are  not  yet  very  sym- 
pathetic and  certainly  not  wildly  enthusiastic  over 
the  social  endeavors  of  the  church,  that  we  are  a 
church  like  every  other,  first  of  all,  as  devotional, 
as  worshipful,  as  spiritual,  at  least  in  endeavor; 

73 


THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION        73 

that  we  have  the  Sunday  School,  we  have  the  morn- 
ing service,  we  have  the  Alliance,  the  young  peo- 
ple's organizations  like  every  other  church.  But 
we  like  to  have  those  things  plus  —  the  old-line 
church  plus. 

Everything  that  has  been  wrought  out  has  come 
through  a  vague  feeling  towards  the  realization  of 
certain  desires.  The  first  of  those  desires  was  to 
have,  not  a  closed  church  but  an  open  church.  We 
felt  the  ordinary  condemnation  of  a  tax-free  or- 
ganization permitted  to  be  open  two  or  three 
hours  on  Sabbath  mornings  only  during  the  entire 
week,  and  its  plant  useless  and  closed  and  idle  all 
the  rest  of  the  time.  So  we  felt  our  way  toward 
a  solution  of  that  problem,  a  meeting  of  that  diffi- 
culty. And  slowly  we  have  added  work  after  work, 
until  now  we  are  usually  open,  I  think,  something 
like  twenty-five  days  a  month  and  frequently  have 
two  and  occasionally  three  activities  going  on  in 
the  church  at  the  same  time. 

The  second  desire  was  to  emphasize  a  catholic 
hospitality  to  all  good  and  needy  causes ;  to  give 
them  a  place  where  they  might  meet,  to  manifest 
sympathy  towards  them,  to  have  the  open  door. 
And  while  we  had  to  fight  the  battle  at  first  with 
those  who  felt  that  a  church  should  be  entirely  — 
not  primarily  but  wholly  devoted  to  worship, 
and  to  worship  alone,  when  we  got  the  vote  through 
our  annual  meeting  and  began  opening  our  doors 
broadly,  we  went  on  and  on,  until  now  we  are  really 
embarrassed  by  the  numbers  of  requests  that  come 


74        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

to   us  —  financially   embarrassed   to  provide   heat 
and  light   and  janitor's   service. 

I  think  this  week  represents  about  what  we  like 
to  have  going  on.  Sunday  night  we  had  one  of 
the  American  Institute  of  Social  Service  lectures, 
written  by  Mr.  Bliss,  on  "  What  to  do  in  Social 
Service,"  and  I  gave  it  with  stereopticon  slides, 
on  "The  Battle  for  Health."  Tuesday  night 
our  Men's  Club  had  a  meeting,  with  a  largely- 
attended  dinner,  on  "  Shall  New  Jersey  amend  its 
Constitution?  "  with  an  address  by  Herbert  Bige- 
low,  that  leader  of  Ohio  democracy,  who  was 
chairman  of  the  Ohio  Constitutional  Convention. 
Last  night  the  Montclair  Cooperative  Society  held 
a  meeting  there,  addressed  by  Mr.  McCann  of  the 
Pure  Food  League  of  New  York  City.  To-night 
the  ladies  will  hear  an  address  by  Mrs.  Florence 
Kelley  and  Mr.  Starr  Murphy,  one  of  the  Rocke- 
feller endowment  trustees,  speaking  on  the  work 
which  the  Consumers'  League  is  undertaking. 
Last  spring  two  anti-Suffrage  meetings  were  held 
in  the  church,  though  it  is  the  Suffrage  headquar- 
ters of  the  city.  The  prominent  citizen  who  pre- 
sided at  one  expressed  what  to  us  was  commenda- 
tion of  this  policy  of  catholic  hospitality  when 
he  said  in  opening  the  meeting,  "  This  institution  of 
Unity  Church  has  come  to  be  regarded  as  a  place 
where  both  sides  of  every  question  can  be  heard 
and  will  be  presented."  And  the  chairman  of  the 
second  meeting  referred  to  it  as  "  the  Fancuil  Hall 
of  Montclair." 


The  third  desire  that  we  had  was  to  have  a 
direct  and  an  immediate  influence  on  the  solution 
of  social,  particularly  local,  problems.  Ordina- 
rily we  have  been  content  as  churches  with  the  in- 
direct influence  that  we  exert  through  the  indi- 
viduals who  comprise  the  churches.  We  had  come 
to  a  point  where  we  were  not  satisfied  with  simply 
being  content  with  what  our  members  might  do  as 
individuals,  and  so  we  set  forth  to  have  some  influ- 
ence as  a  church  in  the  solution  of  problems. 

I  regard  my  church,  as  I  look  over  the  group 
of  splendid  men  and  women  such  as  every  minister 
looks  over  on  Sunday  mornings,  as  a  tremendous 
power,  an  engine,  a  weapon.  Over  here  there  are 
needs.  Why  not  put  them  together?  Why  not 
apply  the  power  to  the  immediate  need?  And  we 
have  gone  to  work  to  do  it.  We  have  adopted  as 
a  motto  the  motto  of  the  battle  of  the  Boyne  — 
"  When  you  see  a  head,  hit  it."  When  there  is  a 
problem  try  to  meet  it  in  some  way. 

There  are  three  lines  on  which  we  have  gone  to 
work  on  the  problems.  First,  on  problems  of  the 
neighborhood ;  secondly,  on  the  local  problems ;  and 
thirdly,  on  the  larger  problems  of  state,  nation  and 
society. 

For  a  long  time  when  we  began  feeling  our  way 
we  strangely  overlooked  our  own  neighborhood. 
The  epoch  in  our  church  history  was  the  discovery 
of  our  own  neighborhood.  Montclair  is  a  town  of 
23,000  people,  very  like  Brookline  or  Newton  in 
being  cultured  and  wealthy  and  perhaps  grundyish. 


76        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

One  quarter  of  our  population  is  of  Italians  and 
negroes,  and  segregated  as  they  are  and  less  for- 
tunate their  needs  are  very  apparent.  So  we  held 
conferences  with  groups  of  workers  there  and  with 
the  teachers  and  nurses  and  principals  in  the 
schools,  and  we  thought  of  starting  a  model  flat 
or  cooking  classes,  but  were  always  balked  by  the 
fact  they  were  so  far  away  from  our  homes  that 
our  ladies  could  not  go  through  the  dark  streets 
at  night,  and  then  the  initial  cost  was  prohibitive. 
While  we  were  seeking  afar  we  happened  to  notice 
some  little  children  who  came  over  the  back  fence 
of  the  church  yard  to  play,  and  so  we  started  one 
year  ago  last  summer  a  playground,  very  simply, 
unostentatiously.  It  was  just  the  problem  of 
Booker  Washington's  story  over  again,  "  Dip 
down  right  where  you  are !  "  We  were  signaling 
frantically  for  fresh  water,  not  knowing  we  were 
off  the  mouth  of  the  Amazon.  We  thought  we 
were  a  long  way  from  the  section  that  needed  help, 
not  knowing  that  we  were  on  the  edge  of  another 
section. 

We  started  a  playground  and  hired  a  supervisor. 
We  had  to  limit  the  age  to  ten  because  we  had  only 
a  backyard,  hardly  as  large  as  this  room.  We  had 
something  like  one  hundred  and  fifty  children. 
This  year  we  extended  our  playground,  hired  three 
supervisors  and  some  four  hundred  children  have 
attended  it ;  and  we  proved  the  need  of  playground 
activity  right  at  that  point.  We  found  that 
though  there  is  a  playground  in  the  poor  section 


THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION        77 

and  a  school  playground  in  another  section,  when 
it  came  to  the  playground  athletic  meet  we  could 
score  more  points  than  the  two  of  them  put  to- 
gether. It  literally  did  me  good  as  a  minister  to 
find  gamins  on  the  street  cars  boasting  about 
Unity.  We  put  Unity  Church,  which  they  never 
noticed  before  as  they  went  by,  into  the  lives  of 
four  or  five  hundred  children. 

Then,  we  found  out  that  we  ought  to  continue 
that  work.  We  did  not  want  them  simply  in  the 
summer,  we  wanted  them  all  the  time.  To  my 
knowledge,  only  two  children  who  go  to  that  play- 
ground have  any  connection  with  the  church  what- 
ever. They  are  mostly  Catholics,  which  makes  the 
problem  at  times  one  of  skating  on  thin  ice.  Some 
of  them  are  Jews;  the  others  come  from  homes 
whose  parents  go  to  other  churches  or  to  no 
church  at  all.  So  we  followed  up  the  playground 
with  a  sewing  school,  which  seems  the  popular  en- 
deavor. That  sewing  school,  now  starting  its 
second  year,  is  as  large  as  the  Sunday  School. 
Yesterday  it  had  seventy-eight  children  there,  and 
has  not  room  for  over  a  hundred.  It  requires 
twelve  or  fifteen  of  our  workers.  The  first  hour 
is  given  to  sewing  in  the  different  classes,  and  the 
second  hour  to  folk  dancing. 

Next,  we  had  to  reach  the  boys  in  some  way  and 
so  we  established  a  boys'  club.  We  are  reaching 
twenty-five  and  expect  to  reach  about  fifty  of  the 
boys  in  the  same  way,  taking  the  first  hour  for 
basketry  and  raffia  work  and  handiwork  of  some 


78        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

sort,  and  the  second  hour  for  games.  And  then, 
realizing  the  particular  need,  we  reached  out  for 
a  "  gang."  We  adopted  a  gang  of  the  older  boys, 
and  that  gives  the  third  aspect  of  our  neighbor- 
hood work.  The  problem  was  how  to  support 
these  activities ;  but  that  worked  out  well,  for  the 
Women's  Alliance  adopted  the  girls,  the  young 
people  adopted  the  boys  and  the  Men's  Club 
adopted  the  young  men.  Thus  the  necessary 
financing  and  supervision  and  guidance  came  about 
very  naturally,  and  those  organizations  have  some- 
thing to  do  now  that  is  as  well  worth  while  as  the 
things  they  were  doing  before,  and  the  nearer  they 
get  to  the  work  the  more  enthusiastic  they  are 
about  it. 

We  are  working  out  towards  other  things.  We 
want  to  hold  neighborhood  socials.  For  instance, 
we  observed  Hallowe'en  in  the  sewing  school,  and 
we  are  probably  going  to  set  aside  New  Year's  and 
Valentine's  Day  and  have  the  parents  of  the  chil- 
dren come  in.  Then  I  hope  this  winter  we  can 
throw  open  our  social  rooms  a  couple  of  nights 
a  week  for  dancing  for  the  domestic  servants  and 
for  the  working  people  who  have  no  other  chance 
under  good  auspices  to  hold  dances.  These  are 
the  ways  in  which  we  are  trying  to  meet  the  neigh- 
borhood problem. 

In  the  second  place,  we  felt  that  we  had  a  duty 
to  help  meet  the  local  community  problems.  In 
at  least  three  cases  we  have  felt  that  we  have  been 
able  to  make  a  definite  contribution  to  the  solu- 


THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION        79 

tion  of  those  problems.  Our  playground  is  with- 
out doubt  a  direct  and  irrefutable  demonstration 
of  the  need  of  a  playground  in  that  section  of  the 
town.  Our  particular  problem,  however,  was  that 
of  recreation  generally.  With  twenty-three  thou- 
sand people  we  literally  had  no  place  where  people 
could  go  at  night.  Those  who  could  afford  it  went 
to  Grand  Opera  in  New  York.  We  are  a  suburb, 
and  in  our  better  homes  the  need  of  recreation  was 
not  at  all  great.  But  our  poor  people  were  forced 
to  go  to  wide-open  Newark,  only  seven  miles  and 
five  cents  away,  into  its  unspeakable  dance  halls, 
into  its  unguarded  picture  places.  There  was 
nothing  at  home  for  them.  When  requests  for  a 
license  for  a  moving  picture  show  came  to  our  Town 
Council,  the  very  strong  Woman's  Club  protested 
almost  unanimously,  and  though  the  ministers'  or- 
ganization (from  which  as  a  Unitarian  minister  I 
am  excluded)  fought  for  it,  the  Council  voted  al- 
most unanimously  to  keep  out  any  moving  picture 
show.  Now,  the  problem  usually  is  to  see  that  the 
moving  picture  show  keeps  good.  Our  particular 
problem  was  to  get  a  moving  picture  show  into 
town,  that  cheap  and  good  form  of  amusement  to 
which  whole  families  can  go  because  it  is  so  cheap 
and  where  they  can  have  romance  and  travel  and 
all  for  slight  expense.  The  matter  seemed  to 
have  died  when  we  became  interested  in  it,  and  in- 
viting the  educational  secretary  of  the  General  Film 
Company  one  Sunday  night,  we  had  a  meeting  to 
demonstrate  that  there  were  good,  fine  educational 


80        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

and  uplifting  films.  Then  we  obtained  permission 
from  the  Council  to  have  a  moving  picture  show, 
and  we  packed  the  church  Saturday  after  Satur- 
day, afternoon  and  evening,  and  secured  all  the 
publicity  we  could.  We  had  carefully  selected 
films,  we  had  the  best  kind  of  music,  we  talked 
around  the  films.  When  we  applied  for  a  renewal 
of  our  license  and  the  Council  refused  it,  that  also 
became  generally  known  and  the  feeling  slowly 
changed.  We  were  in  touch  all  the  time  with  the 
police  committee  of  the  Council,  and  knew  that 
they  stood  three  to  two  against  any  license.  Fol- 
lowing the  advice  of  the  chairman,  we  simply 
brought  every  bit  of  pressure  to  bear  we  possibly 
could  so  that  those  three  members  had  their  tele- 
phone bells  ringing  all  the  time,  and  when  the 
question  came  up  again,  the  Council  voted  unani- 
mously for  a  moving  picture  license  for  the  right 
kind  of  a  theater.  The  highest  license  required 
for  such  a  theater  anywhere  else  in  this  country  is 
$400,  but  the  price  in  Montclair  is  $1,000.  It  is 
carefully  censored.  The  building  they  are  put- 
ting up,  with  its  fixtures,  is  costing  $120,000. 
And  so  at  last  we  have  got  the  right  kind  of  recre- 
ation in  there  for  the  poor  people. 

Now,  the  very  hard  problem  that  we  are  all 
protesting  against  is  the  high  cost  of  living. 
Angels  might  well  fear  to  rush  in  there,  but  John 
Graham  Brooks  had  spoken  to  us  once  on  coopera- 
tion, and  our  little  council  of  twenty,  the  lower 
house  of  our  church,  which  has  only  advisory 


THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION        81 

power  but  which  has  literally  become  so  important 
as  an  initiatory  body  that  the  trustees  always  pass 
everything  that  it  asks  for,  appointed  a  com- 
mittee on  cooperation.  The  committee  went  to 
sleep  and  woke  up  periodically  for  about  a  year 
but  finally  got  interested,  because  its  report  was 
always  called  for  and  it  was  rather  embarrassing 
to  report  only  progress,  which  literally  meant  sleep. 
One  of  the  members  going  to  Europe  investigated 
the  cooperative  enterprises  there  and  came  back 
enthusiastic.  Last  year  that  committee  and  our 
Men's  Club  got  together,  called  a  meeting  that 
crowded  the  church  and  had  all  the  experts  they 
could  find  on  cooperation,  with  rapid-fire  speak- 
ing, every  man  held  at  eight  minutes  and  called 
down  strictly  with  the  bell.  The  entire  subject 
of  cooperation  and  its  possibility  in  meeting  the 
problem  was  discussed.  Everyone  who  was  inter- 
ested in  forming  a  cooperative  society  was  asked 
to  stay,  and  everyone  stayed.  I  think  of  it  as  an 
old-fashioned  revival  meeting  afterwards,  the  peo- 
ple speaking,  questioning,  and  then,  instead  of 
"  Amens  "  and  "  Glories  "  and  so  on,  they  were 
saying  "  Ten  shares,"  "  Five  shares,"  "  One  share," 
and  we  had  over  $4,000  raised  toward  a  co- 
operative store  before  we  parted.  That  has  grown 
to  about  $8,500  since.  After  going  through  its 
period  of  incubation  the  store  came  to  be  last 
May,  handling  groceries  then  and  adding  meats 
this  fall.  Last  night  it  was  reported  at  our  meet- 
ing that  we  were  doing  a  business  of  $80,000  a 


82        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

year  and  will  be  doing  $100,000  by  January. 
Now,  cooperation  to  most  of  us  is  the  next  step. 
Socialists  and  capitalists  and  woman  suffragists 
and  penologists  and  everybody,  whatever  we  may 
think  will  be  the  ultimate  lead,  are  agreed  on  that. 
I  was  interested  at  the  meeting  of  our  Fellowship 
for  Social  Justice  in  Arlington  Street  Church  when 
Mayor  Lund  and  Professor  Scudder  spoke.  After 
them  John  Graham  Brooks  spoke  on  "  Coopera- 
tion, the  next  step  to  Socialism,"  and  they  were 
so  interested  that  during  the  last  hymn,  the  pulpit 
being  high,  the  discussion  went  on,  and  both  of  the 
Socialists  said  to  Mr.  Brooks,  "  You  are  right, 
that  has  to  come  first,  and  if  we  can  buy  our 
groceries  and  provisions  together  as  citizens,  we 
can  learn  to  run  our  municipalities  together." 

Now,  the  difficulty  was  getting  out  from  under. 
It  was  a  church  store  at  first,  but  that  phase  has 
passed,  and  while  the  society  holds  its  meetings  in 
our  church,  because  there  is  no  other  church  in 
town  that  will  let  that  kind  of  meeting  come  into 
it,  it  is  not  a  church  store  any  longer. 

Another  problem  which  we  attacked  last  summer 
was  a  wider  use  of  the  school  plant.  We  felt  that 
the  time  had  come  for  a  wider  use  of  the  school 
plant;  the  sentiment  was  ripe.  We  are  fortunate 
in  using  advertising  space  in  our  local  paper. 
Right  at  the  head  of  the  church  notices,  straddling 
both  columns,  is  the  space  we  control.  No  one 
can  read  about  what  is  going  to  happen  in  any 
church  without  having  to  read  first  what  is  going 


THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION        83 

to  happen  in  our  church,  and  what  "  Unitarian- 
ism  "  is,  and  what  we  think  a  church  ought  to  be, 
and  so  on.  During  the  summer  while  we  were 
having  only  the  playground  advertised,  the  church 
being  closed,  we  turned  to  some  of  the  local  prob- 
lems. We  did  it  rather  naively.  It  occurred  to 
us  that  that  might  be  a  good  way  to  use  the  space, 
and  it  seems  to  have  been  a  lead  which  was  unique. 
So  we  used  our  space  for  several  advertisements. 
One  of  them  dealt  with  the  recreation  problem, 
setting  out  just  what  we  thought  of  the  recre- 
ation needs  of  Montclair.  The  second  dealt  with  the 
housing  problem,  headed  "  Montclair's  Housing 
Problem  is  a  Problem  of  Rents,"  for  it  is  a  problem 
of  land  values  and  speculative  greed.  A  week 
later  the  editor  of  the  paper  told  me  the  real  estate 
people  had  come  to  him  and  secured  three  pages  of 
his  space,  and  devoted  the  first  page  to  setting 
forth  the  value  of  Montclair  real  estate  and  the 
low  price  of  rents.  I  couldn't  get  the  editor  to 
see  that  we  deserved  half  the  advertising  payments 
that  came  in  on  account  of  what  we  had  published. 
We  put  in  a  third  advertisement  on  the  wider  use 
of  the  school  plant.  That  seemed  obvious  to  us, 
and  yet  to  our  surprise  the  "  Outlook  "  picked  up 
the  ad.,  published  it,  and  we  have  had  letters 
from  all  over  the  country,  and  from  Canada  and 
other  places,  on  that  particular  ad.  The  New 
York  Sun  became  interested  in  it,  sent  over  a 
special  reporter  and  gave  us  almost  a  page  in  the 
Sunday  Sun  on  this  particular  thing,  the  use  of 


84        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

paid  advertising  space  by  churches  to  help  in  the 
solution  of  local  problems. 

As  a  result  of  that,  for  we  happened  to  hit  just 
at  the  psychological  moment,  we  organized  a  tri- 
umvirate for  the  wider  use  of  the  school  plant. 
There  is  a  committee  of  the  Federated  Clubs  of 
Montclair  on  music  and  art  and  recreation,  an 
Evening  Schools  Committee  of  the  Board  of  Edu- 
cation, and  a  committee  from  Unity  Church  on 
the  Wider  Use  of  the  School  Plant.  These  three 
are  working  together  now,  and  every  Monday 
night  our  largest  auditorium,  seating  nine  hundred 
people,  is  open  for  the  people.  The  Women's  Club 
provides  concerts  on  alternate  occasions ;  on  the 
other  occasions  the  Board  of  Education  is  supply- 
ing free  lectures  until  Christmas,  and  afterwards 
Unity  Church  supplies  the  free  lectures  until  the 
end  of  the  school  year.  It  so  happened  that  we 
had  made  a  contract  for  one  of  the  very  greatest  of 
the  moving  picture  films,  Homer's  "  Odyssey." 
The  manufacturers  claim  that  they  spent  some- 
thing like  $200,000  in  making  it,  and  two  years' 
time.  It  seemed  to  us  as  we  got  near  our  date  that 
it  was  a  little  too  large  for  us  to  swing,  that  more 
people  than  we  could  get  into  our  church  would 
want  to  see  it,  so  in  a  conference  with  the  Superin- 
tendent of  Schools  we  agreed  that  if  the  Board  of 
Education  would  pay  half  the  expense  we  would 
pay  half  and  we  would  put  it  into  the  free  public 
lecture  course  at  the  school.  It  cost  each  of  us 
$62.50,  but  it  was  thoroughly  justified  in  the 


THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION        85 

event.  In  fact,  we  were  swamped  by  people.  We 
gave  it  two  weeks  ago  and  instead  of  having  an 
afternoon  and  evening  performance,  we  found  we 
had  to  give  two  afternoon  and  two  evening  per- 
formances. Between  twenty-eight  hundred  and 
three  thousand  people  came  to  see  it  without  cost- 
ing them  a  cent.  All  the  school  children  above  a 
certain  grade  were  sent  there,  including  the  high 
school  classes,  and  that  little  contribution  was 
made  to  their  education. 

So,  on  these  local  problems  we  have  been  able 
by  injecting  ourselves  to  have  some  influence. 
There  are  other  problems  before  us.  We  simply 
outline  problems.  We  have  little  notebooks  on 
which  we  put  the  subject  —  the  short  ballot,  mu- 
nicipal water  supply  and  the  rest.  Our  big  prob- 
lem now  is  the  sewage  problem.  There  is  a  great 
trunk  sewer  running  down  from  Paterson  to  New-' 
ark  and  into  New  York  Harbor.  Montclair  felt 
itself  over-assessed  for  its  part,  and  revolted  and 
drew  up  plans  for  a  local  sewage  plant.  But  we 
had  to  put  the  tank  between  three  other  communi- 
ties, which  naturally  rose  up  in  wrath,  and  a  bill 
was  passed  by  the  legislature  forbidding  it.  Gov- 
ernor Wilson  refused  to  sign  the  bill.  They 
fought  it  before  the  State  Board  of  Health  and 
lost  again.  It  is  a  very  difficult  problem,  and  de- 
siring to  throw  light  on  it  our  Men's  Club  held  a 
meeting  two  weeks  ago  at  which  we  had  two 
mayors,  four  great  sanitary  engineers,  one  or  two 
of  them  among  the  best  of  international  reputa- 


86        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

tion,  and  the  Town  Council.  We  had  all  the  coun- 
cil of  one  of  the  next  towns  there,  and  several  prom- 
inent New  York  lawyers,  most  of  whom  had  been 
retained  on  one  side  or  the  other  in  this  fight, 
and  had  a  regular  debate  on  it.  One  side  was 
presented  and  then  the  other  side,  and  perhaps  the 
best  contribution  toward  the  enlightenment  of  the 
citizens  on  this  question  which  they  soon  must 
settle  was  that  particular  meeting. 

As  I  have  said,  the  pressing  problem  in  New 
Jersey  is  coming  to  be,  we  hope,  the  amendment  of 
its  constitution.  Two  of  our  parties  are  pledged 
to  constitutional  amendment.  So  last  Tuesday 
night  we  had  the  man  who  is  responsible  more  than 
any  other  for  leading  the  fight  for  the  amendment 
of  the  Ohio  constitution,  which  resulted  in  what 
Frederic  C.  Howe  calls  the  most  democratic 
charter  of  any  government  in  the  world,  come  on 
from  Ohio  and,  in  connection  with  other  engage- 
ments, address  our  Men's  Club  and  a  number  of 
prominent  citizens. 

Our  particular  policy  is  to  meet  local  problems 
in  all  their  phases.  Of  course  we  keep  in  touch 
with  local  philanthropies.  We  have  special  col- 
lections on  special  Sundays.  We  give  our  Sunday 
School  a  largely  philanthropic  bent,  aside  from  all 
the  rest.  Each  month,  except  the  broken  months 
of  September  and  June,  the  collections  go  by 
months  to  specific  local  philanthropies  and  some 
representative  explains  to  the  children  what  the 
money  is  used  for.  This  year  we  are  having  two 


THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION        87 

of  the  children  explain  on  the  first  Sunday  of  each 
month  exactly  what  the  money  goes  for  that 
month,  and  in  that  way  we  keep  in  touch  with  the 
local  philanthropy. 

Our  endeavor  is  a  more  difficult  one,  naturally, 
when  we  reach  the  larger  problems  of  state  and 
nation,  of  industry,  of  society.  The  only  way, 
we  believe,  in  which  those  can  be  touched  is  through 
experts.  One  thing  we  have  done  is  to  take  out 
membership  as  a  church  in  some  of  the  great  or- 
ganizations. The  church  is  a  member  of  the 
American  Peace  Society,  the  National  Conference 
of  Charities  and  Correction,  the  National  Com- 
mittee for  the  Study  and  Prevention  of  Tubercu- 
losis, the  National  Association  for  Labor  Legisla- 
tion, and  a  number  of  organizations  like  them. 
Each  year  we  try  to  take  out  one  or  more  mem- 
berships of  that  sort,  and  so  the  list  grows. 

We  try  to  keep  in  touch  with  legislation,  both 
state  and  national,  publishing  in  our  bulletin  the 
state  and  national  legislation  affecting  labor, 
women's  labor,  night  labor,  children's  bureau,  and 
so  on. 

Once  when  our  important  child  labor  bill  came 
up  and  the  legislature  had  no  intention  of  doing 
anything  about  it,  simply  pigeon-holing  it  as  it 
had  done  before,  there  came  a  great  awakening 
in  the  state  and  we  succeeded  in  doing  this  as  our 
contribution  to  that  movement.  We  all  agreed 
that  we  would  write  to  the  committee  of  the  Legis- 
lature ;  and  one  of  the  members  of  the  church  who 


88        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

was  on  the  Civic  Federation,  a  very  influential 
organization,  secured  the  passage  of  a  ringing 
resolution  from  that  body.  One  of  the  girls  in  the 
high  school  drew  up  a  petition  and  secured  almost 
a  thousand  names,  many  of  us  started  chain  letters 
for  petitions  in  the  remote  parts  of  the  state,  and 
in  that  way  did  what  little  we  could.  But  we 
feel  that  the  most  and  the  best  we  can  do  toward 
the  solution  of  these  larger  problems  is  the  giving 
of  facts  and  opinions  from  experts ;  so  we  set  aside 
the  Sunday  evenings  of  the  first  three  months  of 
the  year  for  what  we  call  "  Unity  Course  in  the 
Problems  of  To-day,"  securing  the  very  best  pos- 
sible experts  on  the  great  problems.  That  course 
is  now  entering  its  fifth  year.  Just  as  our  neigh- 
borhood work  has  made  us  a  neighborhood  center, 
a  recreation  center,  a  social  center,  this  is  making 
us  a  civic  center.  More  than  any  civic  agency  in 
the  community  we  are  interjecting,  forcing  these 
great  problems  on  the  thought  of  the  people,  be- 
cause they  are  widely  reported.  It  very  frequently 
happens  they  are  reported  even  in  the  New  York 
papers,  which  are  so  sparing  of  their  space.  Last 
winter,  for  example,  we  had  among  our  speakers 
Mrs.  Spencer,  Reginald  Campbell,  David  Starr 
Jordan,  Booker  Washington,  Mayor  Lund,  Pro- 
fessor Hyslop,  John  Mitchell,  Woods  Hutchinson, 
Abdul  Baha  and  men  and  women  like  them.  The 
platform  is  absolutely  free.  The  speaker  can  take 
any  side  that  he  or  she  chooses.  We  go  even  into 
the  doubtful  questions  of  the  social  evil.  As  I 


THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION        89 

say,  they  are  reported  widely  in  the  papers,  and 
so  the  thought  of  people  and  the  resolution  of 
people  and  the  consecration  of  people  are  slowly 
but  surely  affected. 

That  in  brief  is  the  work  that  we  are  trying  to 
do  in  what  we  believe  is  a  real  renaissance  of  the 
church.  A  great  many  feel  that  the  old-line 
church,  as  it  is,  cannot  long  serve  the  world.  The 
best  comment  that  we  get  is  the  attention  that  work 
like  this  receives.  I  was  interested  the  other  night, 
sitting  by  Mr.  Ingersoll,  the  maker  of  "  the  watch 
that  made  the  dollar  famous,"  to  hear  him  say  that 
several  years  ago  he  dropped  the  church  abso- 
lutely and  had  taken  his  family  entirely  out  of  it; 
he  thought  the  church  was  an  absolute  failure. 
"  But,"  said  he,  "  I  think  if  I  could  be  anywhere 
near  a  proposition  like  this  I  should  be  tempted." 
Again  and  again  some  such  comment  comes ;  and 
when  I  think  that  where  we  tried  so  hard  to  reach 
people  two  years  ago  and  were  not  reaching  so 
very  many  by  the  ordinary  methods  of  morning 
services,  now  we  are  getting  in  groups  of  all  kinds 
of  people,  I  realize  that  the  way  to  reach  the 
masses  is  by  means  like  this.  When  Booker  Wash- 
ington speaks  or  Professor  DuBois,  one-fifth  of 
our  audience  is  negroes.  When  Mayor  Lund  or 
John  Mitchell  speaks,  a  great  many  people  come 
without  neckties  and  without  collars.  When  we 
have  moving  pictures  in  the  afternoon,  I  have  seen 
the  church  filled  with  three  or  four  hundred  little 
girls;  and  when  the  playground  closes  I  find  the 


90        THE  COMMITTEE  IN  ACTION 

social  room  crowded  with  Catholic  mothers.  So 
in  all  these  different  ways  we  draw  different  groups. 
The  one  virtue  that  we  emphasize  is  the  virtue 
of  initiative.  We  are  not  afraid  of  starting 
things,  in  fact  we  want  to  start  them.  Initiative 
is  the  thing  that  so  many  of  our  churches  lack, 
and  it  is  the  sine  qua  non  of  the  approach  to  the 
social  question,  I  believe,  by  the  church.  It 
reaches  the  people  and  attracts  them  to  a  new  be- 
lief in  the  church.  And  we  are  not  neglecting  the 
old.  We  are  keeping  the  church  just  as  worship- 
ful and  reverent  and  spiritual  as  we  can,  but  are 
taking  unto  ourselves  these  new  activities.  We  do 
not  know  where  it  leads,  we  do  not  know  what  the 
end  of  it  all  will  be,  but  we  believe  we  are  moving 
in  the  right  direction. 


THE  MORALIZING  OF  BUSINESS 

(With    Special    Reference    to    the    Operation  of 
Railroads) 

JAMES  O.  FAGAN 

The  world  to-day  is  determined  to  put  more 
character  into  its  business  men,  into  its  business 
methods,  and  into  its  laws  and  institutions.  The 
manner  of  conducting  business  as  regards  right 
and  wrong  is  the  moral  aspect  of  the  situation. 
In  this  sense,  to  moralize  means  to  correct  or  to 
improve  the  business  morals  of  people.  The 
peddler  selling  berries  on  the  street  corner,  the 
mill  agent  in  his  office  adjusting  his  payroll  and 
the  merchant  prince  who  invests  his  millions  in 
"  commodities,"  have  all  been  notified,  very  em- 
phatically, by  public  opinion,  to  this  effect.  Con- 
sequently, to-day  business  no  longer  follows  a  flag. 
Increasingly  in  the  future  it  is  going  to  follow  the 
quality  of  the  goods  and  the  character  of  the  serv- 
ice. Of  course  a  nation-wide  scheme  or  policy  of 
this  description  is  of  the  greatest  benefit  to  the 
workingman.  The  moralizing  of  business  men, 
and  of  business  methods  signifies  to  him  a  fairer 
adjustment  of  work  and  wages;  it  also  means,  or 

should  mean,  promotion  by  the  merit  route,  more 

91 


character  in  the  industrial  output,  and  more 
sympathy  and  comradeship  between  man  and 
man. 

But  now  coming  down  to  a  class  or  classes  of 
business  to  which  this  moralizing  effort  may  fairly 
be  applied,  the  railroad  business  appears  to  me  to 
offer  an  interesting  field  for  observation  and  re- 
search. The  popular  side  of  the  humanizing  and 
moralizing  of  the  railroad  business  has  now  been 
before  the  public  for  a  number  of  years,  and  bet- 
terment of  a  varied  description  in  all  branches  of 
the  service  has  resulted.  But  through  it  all,  and 
in  spite  of  it  all,  the  railroad  itself  remains  to-day 
the  most  baffling  of  our  political  and  industrial 
problems.  In  some  respects  it  is  the  most  satis- 
factory, and  in  others,  the  most  unsatisfactory  in- 
dustrial phenomenon  of  the  times.  I  have  kept 
a  scrapbook  of  notes  on  the  subject  and  I  read 
in  this  file  that  for  a  number  of  years  the  American 
railroad  has  been  looked  upon  by  public  opinion 
as  a  sort  of  fallen  angel,  deputed  by  his  Satanic 
Majesty  to  preach  and  practice  the  doctrines  of 
extortion,  graft,  low  wages,  high  rates,  and  the 
morality  of  the  preventable  railroad  accident. 
How  is  it  possible  then,  to  find  an  ethical  center 
or  a  standard  for  good  workmanship  or  loyalty 
in  such  a  national  atmosphere?  No  wonder  that 
at  the  present  day,  under  the  influence  of  these 
doctrines,  there  seems  to  be  a  sort  of  consensus  of 
public  opinion  that  in  order  to  get  some  decent 
measure  of  public  service  from  corporations  of 


this  nature  they  must  be  mercilessly  fined,  fleeced 
and  fumigated. 

This  kind  of  national  attitude  toward  the  rail- 
roads, which  has  a  moralizing  foundation,  we  must 
remember,  has  been  blindly  assumed  by  individuals, 
by  juries,  by  some  professional  people,  by  sections 
of  the  press,  and  to  some  extent,  by  railroad  com- 
missions or  commissioners,  with  the  tacit  or  open 
encouragement  of  thousands,  who  are  still  pos- 
sessed with  the  ingrained  idea  that  the  railroad  is 
a  public  enemy. 

Now  for  the  present  I  have  nothing  to  say  about 
railroad  monopolies  or  financial  policies.  In  the 
past  the  railroad  business  has  probably  been  on  the 
same  moral  level  with  the  political  and  commercial 
habits  of  the  people.  The  point  I  want  to  arrive 
at  is  simply  this,  that,  according  to  popular  notion 
on  the  subject,  being  a  public  enemy,  the  railroad 
should  be  subjected  to  the  most  up-to-date  and 
moral  treatment  for  its  reform.  If  there  is  any- 
thing coming  to  the  ordinary  convict  on  account 
of  his  heredity  and  environment  it  should  also  be 
borne  in  mind  in  judging  a  railroad,  but  chiefly 
be  it  remembered  that  all  social  or  legislative  meas- 
ures for  the  reform  of  your  criminal,  regardless 
of  his  station,  must  be  conducted  by  public  opinion 
along  moral  lines,  that  is  to  say,  in  a  moralizing 
and  not  in  a  persecuting  spirit. 

Now  whether  we  know  it  or  not,  the  great  prob- 
lem of  the  day  is  to  improve  the  personal  and 
business  relationship  between  the  worker  and  the 


94      THE  MORALIZING  OF  BUSINESS 

employer  on  railroads,  as  elsewhere,  and  in  order 
to  do  this  it  will  first  be  necessary  for  all  concerned 
to  agree  upon  common  camping  ground,  or  some 
final  court  of  appeal.  On  the  railroad  to-day  at- 
tempts are  being  made  to  improve  relationship  and 
service  in  the  name  of  organized  labor,  in  the  name 
of  financial  or  business  interests,  in  the  name  of 
scientific  management,  in  the  name  of  humanity 
even,  and  while  the  results  of  the  disjointed  efforts 
of  these  groups  have  kept  the  wheels  moving,  the 
situation  as  a  whole  must  be  looked  upon  as  om- 
inous of  trouble  and  perhaps  of  failure.  The  dif- 
ficulty is  we  have  no  ethical  center  whatever  as  a 
basis  of  agreement. 

Now  this  tribunal  of  simple  right  and  simple 
wrong,  from  the  moral  point  of  view  of  the  Ameri- 
can people,  is  a  court  to  which,  to  begin  with,  all 
the  conflicting  interests  I  have  mentioned  can  be 
persuaded,  sooner  or  later,  to  appeal.  At  any 
rate,  I  say  if  you  cannot  moralize  the  railroad  and 
every  other  business  along  this  line  of  work  and 
thought,  the  cases  are  hopeless.  Wrapt  up  in 
this  story  of  right  and  wrong,  regardless  of 
politics,  industrial  affiliations,  and  financial  inter- 
ests, is  the  great  human  side  of  industrial  relations 
at  the  present  day.  But  when  I  say  that  public 
opinion  to-day  is  called  upon  to  enforce  the  recog- 
nition of  this  moral  judgment  seat,  I,  of  course, 
enter  the  arena  of  practical  affairs.  So,  to  begin 
with,  let  me  say  that  managers  of  railroad  cor- 
porations and  of  large  business  interests  in  this 


THE  MORALIZING  OF  BUSINESS      95 

country  are  now  being  compelled  by  law  and  the 
stress  of  public  opinion,  to  recognize  this  moral, 
this  human  tribunal,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
is  not  another  single  interest  connected  with  the 
railroads,  from  a  labor  organization  all  the  way 
down  to  a  trespasser  on  the  tracks,  which  is  being 
persuaded  or  compelled  to  do  anything  of  this 
kind.  To  make  this  clear  it  will  be  necessary  to 
illustrate  my  argument  quite  freely.  My  purpose, 
however,  is  not  to  defend  railroads  or  railroad 
management,  but  briefly  to  demonstrate  what 
moralizing  the  railroad  business  in  America  really 
means,  and  how  impossible  it  will  be  to  improve  in- 
dustrial relationship  between  employe  and  em- 
ployer along  any  other  lines. 

Now  when  I  say  that  to-day  the  railroads  are 
being  moralized  from  the  top  and  demoralized  from 
the  bottom,  I  give  you  the  industrial,  the  political 
and  the  economic  situation  in  a  nutshell.  While 
a  wonderful  and  far-reaching  reform  movement  is 
under  way  at  the  top,  strange  things  indeed  are 
current  and  are  growing  apace  at  the  bottom. 
The  moralizing  process  should  go  forward  at  the 
bottom  as  well  as  at  the  top.  For  example,  the 
moralizing  of  the  railroads  at  the  bottom  should 
begin  with  the  trespassers.  Trespassing  on  rail- 
road property  is  a  national  affair  of  tremendous 
importance.  A  disaster  like  that  to  the  steamship 
Titanic  very  naturally  gives  rise  to  widespread 
sorrow  and  indignation,  and  yet  this  is  just  what 
is  happening  on  the  railroads,  in  the  aggregate  of 


96     THE  MORALIZING  OF  BUSINESS 

fatalities,  every  three  or  four  months,  year  in  and 
year  out  by  reason  of  trespassing.  In  the  fiscal 
year  ending  June  30,  1911,  the  number  of  tres- 
passers killed  on  American  railroads  was  5,284, 
and  the  number  injured  was  5,614,  not  tramps, 
mind  you,  but  seventy-five  per  cent,  otherwise  law- 
abiding  and  respectable  citizens. 

The  Pennsylvania  Railroad  recently  issued  a 
statement  to  the  effect  that  the  number  of  tres- 
passers killed  on  the  company's  lines  during  the  past 
year  was  527 ;  and  the  expenditures  of  the  police 
department  in  its  war  against  trespassing  amounted 
to  $100,000.  The  company  again  calls  on  the 
public  —  the  magistrates,  civil  authorities,  and  all 
public  spirited  citizens  —  to  aid  in  the  suppression 
of  this  widespread  evil.  A  considerable  percentage 
of  the  trespassers  are  mischief-makers.  They  de- 
stroy signal  lamps,  put  obstructions  on  the  tracks 
and  commit  other  acts  endangering  the  safety  of 
trains. 

Now  then,  after  dealing  with  the  trespassing 
situation,  that  is  to  say,  after  moralizing  those 
who  look  upon  the  railroad  tracks  as  a  sort  of 
national  sidewalk,  I  would  next  try  to  moralize  a 
few  legions  of  those  who  look  upon  the  railroad 
exchequer  as  they  do  upon  the  town  pump.  As  for 
instance : 

The  Marblehead  Draft, 
Baker's  Bridge  Accident, 
The  Photographer, 


THE  MORALIZING  OF  BUSINESS     07 

Claim  Agent's  story  for  the  Youth's  Companion, 
The  Claim  Agent  and  the  Magnifier. 

Then,  after  I  had  moralized  this  feature  of  the 
business,  I  would  next  pay  a  little  attention  to  the 
attitude  of  juries.  The  town  pump  idea  has  a 
pretty  good  hold  on  many  of  them.  In  all  sin- 
cerity, I  think  the  railroads  have  a  moral  right 
to  complain  about  the  unreasonable  nature  of  some 
of  the  verdicts,  reasonable  enough  if  a  railroad  is 
a  public  enemy,  but  not  otherwise.  Some  of  these 
verdicts  are  serious  financially,  others  are  of  the 
ridiculous  variety. 

Illustrations : 

Damages  for  Hay  Fever, 

A  "  Breach  of  promise  "  case. 

Again,  many  lawyers,  doctors  and  real  estate 
agents  have  had  this  town  pump  idea  in  their 
anatomies  from  way  back  in  the  stone  age  for 
railroad  ties.  While  we  are  moralizing  the  rail- 
road service  we  must  bear  these  features  in  mind. 
We  must  remember  that  we  are  asking  railroad 
managers,  whom  society  now  has  by  the  neck,  to 
draw  up  to  and  sit  at  the  same  table  with  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  workers  and  outsiders,  and  to  ar- 
range and  promote  good  service  and  human  feeling 
on  a  moral  basis  from  a  common  ethical  center. 
Prejudice  may  blind  us  to  its  significance,  but  the 
moral  question  mark  is  over  it  all. 

And  while  I  am  about  it,  I  may  as  well  say  that 


98      THE  MORALIZING  OF  BUSINESS 

even  the  press,  specifically  the  yellow  press,  in  its 
attitude  towards  the  railroads  needs  a  pretty  severe 
dose  of  moralizing.  With  some  of  these  news- 
papers any  sensational  yarn  will  do,  and  if  you 
wish  to  refute  it  you  can  by  means  of  a  paid  "  ad.," 
and  in  no  other  way.  Publicity  and  regulation 
for  railroads  are  all  right;  applied  to  newspapers 
to  compel  a  public  disclosure  of  their  ownership 
and  profits  and  of  the  influences  which  dictate 
their  policies,  we  are  told,  are  all  wrong. 

But  allow  me  to  continue  my  moralizing  a  little 
longer.  As  I  look  at  it,  in  their  attitude  towards 
the  railroads  the  politicians  and  legislators  are 
also  in  line  for  a  few  moral  reminders.  Some 
time  ago  in  Faneuil  Hall,  I  think  it  was,  a  state- 
ment was  made  that  a  railroad  manager  would  lap 
up  anything  placed  before  him  by  a  brotherhood 
or  an  organization  of  employes.  I  am  not  so  sure 
about  that  point,  but  I  will  say  that  the  manager 
will  have  to  be  pretty  lively  to  get  in  his  lap  ahead 
of  the  average  politician. 

And  talking  about  legislation  reminds  me  of 
what  is  called  "  the  full  crew  bill."  Some  time  ago 
when  this  legislation  was  getting  under  way,  a 
conference  was  held  in  a  well-known  manager's 
office.  This  manager  said  to  the  representatives 
of  railroad  labor,  "  Look  here,  you  need  not  go  to 
the  legislature  for  these  extra  men.  Just  tell  me 
on  what  trains  in  this  state,  or  on  this  system,  these 
men  are  necessary  and  I  will  put  them  on.  I  will 
simply  take  your  word  for  it,  and  we  can  stop  the 


THE  MORALIZING  OF  BUSINESS      99 

legislation  right  here  and  now."  "  Thank  you," 
replied  the  labor  men,  "  but  you  don't  understand 
what  we  are  driving  at;  it  may  not  be  necessary 
on  your  system,  but  it  is  in  Virginia  and  we  pro- 
pose to  standardize  legislation  just  as  we  have 
standardized  the  payroll  and  the  qualifications  of 
the  men."  Here  also,  I  think,  there  is  room  for 
a  little  business  moralizing. 

Again,  take  the  following  act  relative  to  the 
employment  of  locomotive  engineers  and  conduc- 
tors by  railroad  corporations: 

SECTION  1.  No  person  shall  act  as  a  locomotive 
engineer  unless  he  shall  have  been  employed  two 
years  as  a  locomotive  fireman  or  as  an  engineer's 
helper,  or,  prior  to  the  passage  of  this  act,  shall  have 
been  employed  as  a  locomotive  engineer. 

SECTION  2.  No  person  shall  act  as  a  conductor  on 
a  railroad  train  unless  he  shall  have  been  employed 
as  a  brakeman  for  two  years,  or,  prior  to  the  passage 
of  this  act,  shall  have  been  employed  as  a  conductor 
on  a  railroad  train. 

The  other  day   I  came  across   a  copy  of  the 
argument  in  support  of  this  bill,  or  a  similar  one, 
as  it  applied  to  New  Hampshire.     It  was  drawn 
up  and  presented  by  the  attorney  for  the 
Order  of  Railway  Conductors 
Order  of  Railway  Trainmen 
Brotherhood  of  Locomotive  Engineers 
Brotherhood  of  Locomotive  Firemen   and  En- 
gineers. 

Hear,  then,  one  or  two  of  the  principal  items 


100      THE  MORALIZING  OF  BUSINESS 

in  this  argument  of  the  attorney:  Incompetent 
lawyers,  physicians,  dentists  and  druggists  are,  of 
course,  capable  of  doing  great  injury.  But  the 
incompetence  of  the  lawyer  and  the  dentist  seldom, 
if  ever,  affect  the  safety  of  human  life.  And  the 
druggist  and  physician,  while  their  opportunities 
for  doing  harm  are  considerable,  seldom  bring  down 
more  than  one  victim  at  a  killing. 

In  railroading,  however,  we  are  confronted  by 
an  entirely  different  situation.  We  have  no  choice 
as  between  the  competent  and  the  incompetent  con- 
ductor or  engineer.  When  we  take  a  train,  we  do 
not  even  know  who  is  in  charge  of  it, —  whether 
experienced  or  inexperienced,  competent  or  incom- 
petent, prudent  or  rash.  We  have  to  take  such 
service  as  the  railroad  gives  us. 

It  is  these  trainmen,  hundreds  of  thousands  in 
number,  the  wage-earners  for  millions  of  depend- 
ents, who  appear  before  you  and  ask  for  this 
small  measure  of  protection,  as  they  are  asking  it 
of  the  legislatures  of  every  state  in  the  Union.  No 
class  of  the  community  is  more  deserving  or  more 
in  need  of  every  protection  that  ingenuity  and 
forethought  can  devise.  And  none  is  better  quali- 
fied intelligently  to  estimate  its  own  needs.  And 
its  needs  are  our  needs, —  the  needs  of  us  all,  who 
are  obliged  again  and  again,  in  perfect  helpless- 
ness, to  entrust  our  lives  to  whomsoever  the  rail- 
roads may  place  in  control  of  their  locomotives  and 
trains. 

Now  taking  it  at  its  face  value  this  argument  is 


THE  MORALIZING  OF  BUSINESS      101 

unassailable.  But  unfortunately  there  is  a  joker 
in  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  railroad  manager 
does  not  of  his  own  power  or  initiative,  place  en- 
ginemen  and  conductors  in  control  of  their  loco- 
motives and  trains.  In  a  very  real  and  practical 
sense  the  qualifications  of  the  men  have  been  stand- 
ardized. They  now  grow  into  their  jobs  or  are 
bumped  into  them,  and  it  takes  a  mighty  strong 
minded  manager  to  interfere  in  any  way  with  the 
bumping  system.  True,  the  manager  is  responsible 
for  the  actions  of  the  men,  but  he  has  been  deprived 
of  the  power  of  selection  or  of  changing  the  posi- 
tions of  the  men  according  to  his  judgment  of 
the  requirements  of  the  service.  Standardizing 
such  matters  and  stripping  the  superintendent  of 
his  natural  prerogative  as  in  the  legislation  I  have 
referred  to  is  a  notification  to  him  that  his  human 
side  is  not  recognized  either  by  the  state  or  by 
employer.  Now  in  regard  to  this  human  side  of 
business  life !  When  I  was  invited  to  write  on  the 
subject,  "  The  moralizing  of  business,"  my  cor- 
respondent said: 

"  In  selecting  the  topic  we  had  something  like  this 
in  mind.  The  sentiment  behind  a  great  deal  of  the 
rapidly  developing  enterprise  of  the  last  thirty  years 
has  been  '  Business  is  business/  without  much  re- 
gard for  the  human  element  involved.  This  has  re- 
sulted in  much  hardship  and  injustice  and  ill  feeling. 
We  are  beginning  now  to  learn  that  business  cannot 
be  conducted  with  the  greatest  success  unless  the 
human  side  is  recognized.  Here  and  there  masters 


and  men  are  drawing  together  again  in  the  personal 
relations  which  existed  in  earlier  years." 

By  all  means,  then,  let  us  push  the  good  work 
along;  and  it  seems  to  me,  so  far  as  many  of  our 
railroad  critics  are  concerned,  that  the  most  urgent 
and  necessary  thing  at  the  present  day  is  to 
moralize  a  few  of  our  railroad  moralizers.  The 
job  of  the  railroad  manager  to-day,  to  develop 
some  kind  of  human  relationship  and  interest  out 
of  such  a  condition  of  antagonism  and  without 
the  assistance  of  public  opinion,  is  almost  hope- 
less. 

Many  a  long  year  has  passed,  twenty  at  least, 
since  first  I  became  interested  in  railroad  matters 
outside  my  own  job  and  my  own  pay  envelope. 
For  me  the  railroad  has  always  possessed  a  strange 
fascination.  My  first  impressions  of  the  charm 
of  its  work  and  life  have  been  lasting.  To  me 
it  has  a  stupendous  reality,  a  breadth  of  moral  and 
industrial  interest  that  defies  analysis.  From  the 
beginning  I  have  loved  every  sound,  every  feature 
connected  with  it,  and  to  a  very  great  extent  I 
have  studied  the  history  of  American  progress  in 
the  light  as  it  were,  of  the  enterprise  and  achieve- 
ment of  railroad  men.  I  have  all  kinds  of  criti- 
cisms to  apply  to  some  features  of  labor  unionism, 
but  I  have  all  sorts  of  good  things  to  say  about 
railroad  men.  Every  once  in  a  while  the  question 
is  put  to  me,  "  What  does  organized  labor  say  to 
you  anyway?  "  I  will  answer  that  question  right 
here  and  now.  Two  or  three  days  ago  going  home 


THE  MORALIZING  OF  BUSINESS      103 

on  the  train,  I  met  the  treasurer  of  the  Brother- 
hood of  R.  R.  Signalmen.  He  said  to  me,  "  We 
all  understand  you  can  no  longer  throw  sixty 
levers,  or  thirty  for  that  matter,  so  at  a  meeting 
the  other  day  it  was  voted  to  send  you  your  mem- 
bership ticket  for  the  year  with  a  full  receipt  of 
all  dues  and  assessments.  We  differ  at  times,  but 
we  wish  you  well." 

And  so  it  goes  on  in  storm  and  stress  and  sun- 
shine, as  it  should  go  on  towards  an  ever  unfolding 
interminable  destiny.  The  other  evening  I  was 
present  at  the  banquet  of  the  Economic  Club  at  the 
American  House.  I  came  away  from  the  meeting 
very  much  impressed  by  the  sincerity  and  honest 
attitude  of  a  number  of  speakers  on  this  topic  of 
industrial  unrest.  One  after  another  the  eternal 
arguments  and  ideas  in  regard  to  solution  or  bet- 
terment were  again  submitted  and  thrown  once 
more  into  the  caldron  of  discussion.  Good  work, 
I  say,  and  good  men,  but  you  could  no  more  see  any 
practical  or  specific  outcome  of  the  discussion  than 
you  can  watch  from  minute  to  minute  the  growth 
of  a  tree.  But  after  the  meeting  I  went  out  into 
the  country.  The  storm  of  the  evening  had  passed 
away  and  in  its  place  were  all  the  cheer  and  wonder 
of  the  star  light.  I  thought  of  the  order,  the 
majesty,  the  mystery  of  it  all  and  of  the  faith  that 
is  and  must  be  behind  those  whirling  circles  of 
twinkling  stars  and  I  said  to  myself,  "  We  who 
retain  our  courage  and  our  grip  on  the  universe  — 
we  at  least,  can  understand." 


A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM 

CHARLES  F.  DOLE,  D.D. 

President,   Twentieth  Century  Club,  Boston 

It  is  really  a  very  wonderful  thing  that  we 
should  be  talking  about  a  social  program.  It  is  a 
testimony  to  our  faith  in  the  possibility  of  human 
progress.  It  means  a  sort  of  high  idealism.  It 
is  a  bold  task,  considering  the  complexity  of  this 
vast  universe,  that  we  should  venture  to  think  that 
we, — not  even  a  united  nation,  not  all  men  but  only 
those  who  are  specially  interested, — can  somehow 
by  putting  our  thoughts  and  our  efforts  together, 
effectively  steer  the  motion  of  human  society  in 
the  way  in  which  we  think  it  ought  to  go. 

We  often  talk  about  this  social  problem  very 
much  as  we  talk  about  a  patient  who  lies  on  his  sick 
bed.  The  doctors  and  the  experts  come  in  to 
diagnose  his  case,  and  try  to  make  out  what  ought 
to  be  done  for  him.  In  this  instance  everybody  is 
a  doctor  who  has  any  interest  whatever  in  the  sub- 
ject, and  everybody  is  ready  with  remedies,  and 
some  are  saying  that  it  is  a  very  sick  man,  and 
that  he  will  never  get  well  on  the  diet  and  regimen 
which  he  is  now  having,  that  you  have  absolutely 
got  to  change  the  whole  arrangement,  or  he  will 

die  on  your  hands.     I  heard  a  man  the  other  night, 
104 


A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM  105 

a  very  well-fed  gentleman  —  I  do  not  think  he 
lives  on  an  income  of  less  than  $6,000  a  year  — 
speaking  fluently  of  "  the  utter  misery  "  of  the 
society  with  which  we  are  surrounded,  as  if  the 
only  thing  that  we  could  hope  for  was  through 
some  radical  and  complete  change. 

It  is  always  open  to  us  to  take  one  theory  or 
its  opposite  in  almost  every  human  issue  that  arises, 
to  translate  the  problem  into  the  miwis  term  down- 
ward, or  the  plus  term  upward.  It  is  possible  for 
us  to  take  an  evolutionary  philosophy,  or  a  revolu- 
tionary philosophy  of  human  society.  Thus,  you 
know  that  nearly  all  of  us  older  people  were 
brought  up  years  ago  to  suppose  that  the  period 
in  which  Jesus  came  into  the  world  was  the  worst 
period  in  human  life  that  had  ever  been;  that 
things  had  got  so  bad  that  God  had  to  intervene 
to  save  the  world.  So  all  through  the  early  period 
of  Christian  history  everybody  was  expecting  im- 
mediate and  radical  intervention.  The  world,  they 
said,  was  so  bad  that  nothing  could  be  hoped  for 
it.  And  yet,  as  we  look  back  to-day,  we  know  that 
this  judgment  was  wrong;  it  was  probably  the  best 
period  of  human  history  that  ever  had  been. 
Great  spiritual  movements,  great  humanitarian 
movements  were  going  on  in  that  age.  Jesus' 
life  and  teachings  grew  out  of  the  period  in 
which  he  appeared,  and  belonged  to  it.  We 
know  now  that  so  far  from  a  revolution  taking 
place  as  they  expected,  it  was  only  a  succession 
and  series  of  changes  and  movements  of  evolution. 


106          .     A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM 

If  then  we  believe  that  there  has  been  any  human 
progress,  such  progress  has  come  about  by  the 
gradual  bettering  of  humanity.  Sometimes  it  has 
seemed  very  slow.  Perhaps  some  of  you  do  not 
believe  that  there  has  been  any  change  for  the 
better.  If  so,  I  say  God  help  you,  or  whatever 
you  believe  in,  under  the  name  of  God.  For  unless 
there  has  been  improvement,  unless  there  has  been 
some  guiding  power  carrying  us  upwards,  I  suspect 
that  those  are  right  who  say  that  iron  determinism 
rules  life,  that  there  is  nothing  for  our  little  human 
race  except  to  float  on  the  raft,  and  let  the  raft 
go  where  it  may.  People  hardly  realize  how  this 
whole  idea  of  progress  and  reform  and  improve- 
ment, even  by  means  of  radical  revolution,  is 
related  to  spiritual  idealism  and  would  absolutely 
go  to  pieces,  unless  it  is  rooted  in  spiritual  idealism. 
The  spiritual  universe  to  which  we  belong  is  the 
thought  underlying  our  faith  in  progress. 

If  I  may  dare,  after  what  I  have  said  of  the 
foolishness  of  the  doctors,  to  say  anything  about 
my  thought  of  society,  I  wish  boldly  to  say  that 
I  do  not  think  society  is  an  invalid.  I  do  not 
think  that  the  figure  of  a  patient  lying  ill  and  re- 
quiring the  treatment  of  the  sick,  fits  the  case. 
Not  that  I  am  unwilling  to  face  the  evil  things  in 
society.  I  do  not  think  there  is  anything  so  cheap 
and  easy  as  to  abuse  society  on  its  seamy  side. 
One  could  reel  off  the  preachment  of  it  by  the  hour. 
B\it  I  think  that  we  are  dealing  fairly  by  all  this 
side,  when  we  begin  by  saying  that  we  recognize 


A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM  107 

in  it  a  barbarous  world,  and  then  by  going  on  to 
say  that  our  faith  is  that  this  barbarous  world  is 
on  its  way  upward  toward  the  light.  It  is  like  a 
child  growing,  and  so  far  as  we  have  ideals  by 
which  to  judge  the  conduct  of  the  child,  so  far  as 
it  is  given  to  any  of  us  to  see  streaks  of  light  com- 
ing into  the  world  by  which  we  can  measure  the 
value  of  things,  we  are  properly  pained  and  stag- 
gered at  times  by  the  amount  and  wretchedness 
of  the  barbarism.  And  yet  the  barbarism,  bad 
as  it  is,  belongs,  does  it  not?  to  a  childish  world. 
We  could  each  make  the  same  kind  of  abuse  of  his 
own  self  and  his  own  career.  Any  one  of  us  can 
talk  his  own  career  down  into  negative  terms  and 
with  self-pity  make  himself  utterly  miserable. 
Have  you  never  tried  it  ?  You  had  better  try  it,  if 
you  never  have,  and  see  how  easy  it  is,  and  you  will 
find  all  sorts  of  things  which,  as  you  look  back  upon 
them,  would  seem  to  you  simply  dreadful  to  re- 
turn to  —  for  instance  the  primary  grade  with  all 
the  aches  and  pains  of  childhood.  Yet  when  we 
were  there  we  did  not  know  how  miserable  we  were. 
On  the  whole,  we  were  not  really  miserable.  So 
society  to-day  does  not  generally  know  that  it  is 
miserable  until  someone  has  told  it  so. 

A  man  on  the  coast  of  Maine,  who  was  earning 
his  living  by  the  day,  picked  up  the  book  written 
some  years  ago  by  one  of  the  sophisticated,  en- 
titled, "  Is  Life  Worth  Living?  "  and  he  said, 
"  What  kind  of  a  man  is  it  who  wants  to  know, 
Is  life  worth  living?  "  It  was  abundantly  worth 


108  A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM 

living  to  that  man ;  I  suspect  it  is  abundantly  worth 
living  to  the  barbarian.  If  now  we  can  say  that 
progress  is  upward,  if  we  can  say  that  the  child  is 
growing  (and  unless  we  can  say  that  the  child  is 
growing  it  is  not  much  use  to  talk  about  him) 
then  we  can  try  to  help  develop  his  growth  and 
save  repeating  the  mistakes  and  errors  and  pains 
and  aches  of  young  childhood.  We  may  hope  to 
guide  society,  as  it  passes  on  its  way  on  the  great 
spiral  circle  upwards,  so  that  it  shall  be  able  by 
and  by  through  all  its  members  to  see  the  majesty 
of  the  curve  on  which  it  rises,  so  that  all  souls  shall 
be  able  to  share  in  this  wonderful  social  self- 
consciousness  which  is  already  coming  to  many,  al- 
most a  new  thing  in  the  world!  There  has  been 
self-consciousness,  there  has  been  tribal  conscious- 
ness, there  has  been  class  consciousness,  these  are 
all  terms  up  toward  the  great  social  consciousness 
of  the  whole  of  mankind. 

Now  let  us  try  to  see  for  a  moment  what  we 
mean  by  poverty,  because  our  problem  is  largely 
called  the  problem  of  poverty.  Poverty,  of 
course,  is  a  purely  relative  term.  If  we  were  to 
visit  an  Eskimo  tribe,  I  suppose  We  should  say 
that  there  was  as  wretched  poverty  in  every  way 
as  we  could  imagine,  or  if  we  could  see  some  of 
the  primitive  tribes  such  as  are  still  existing  in 
their  native  haunts.  And  yet  the  fact  is  that 
they  are  not  conscious  of  its  being  poverty.  They 
do  not  know  it  until  you  set  something  up  against 
it  and  above  it,  until  you  show  them  people  who 


A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM  109 

have  what  they  have  not;  then  they  begin  to  be 
dissatisfied.  To  a  certain  extent  this  is  a  very 
excellent  kind  of  dissatisfaction,  serving  as  a  spur 
and  excitement,  if  a  man  does  not  make  it  the 
keynote  of  his  life.  Is  poverty  merely  the  neces- 
sity of  living  upon  a  very  small  amount  of  money  ? 
Why,  there  are  many  people  who  are  living  on  a 
pittance  with  a  very  great  degree  of  comfort. 
There  is  nothing  so  perplexing  as  to  be  able  to 
state  what  the  minimum  wage  should  be  in  this 
country.  The  minimum  wage  for  a  New  Yorker 
is  an  entirely  different  thing  from  the  minimum 
wage  down  in  Alabama.  The  minimum  wage  is  all 
the  time  changing.  One  woman  with  a  certain 
minimum  wage  will  do  twice  as  much  effective 
service  for  her  household  as  another  with  twice  the 
amount.  Is  it  poverty  to  be  obliged  to  work? 
That  is  simply  a  continuation  of  the  old  false 
theory  of  the  original  curse  on  labor.  We  think 
that  there  is  nothing  so  precious  as  to  be  able  to 
do  intelligent  work. 

Poverty  is  essentially,  and  so  far  as  we  are  con- 
cerned with  it,  whatever  takes  away  or  diminishes 
the  power  of  the  man  to  live  the  life  of  a  man. 
If  the  wages  are  low,  but  the  man  is  living  the  life 
of  a  self-determining,  aspiring  and  happy  man  so 
far,  he  is  not  the  victim  of  poverty.  Has  a  man 
twice  or  three  times  what  is  usually  thought  neces- 
sary for  a  living,  and  is  he  sour  and  bitter  and  dis- 
satisfied? Is  he  losing  the  tone  of  his  life?  Is 
he  a  bad  companion,  poisoning  everyone  with  his 


110  A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM 

bitterness?  Then  that  man  is  poor.  There  is  no 
poverty  like  want  of  the  manly  qualities.  There 
is  no  poverty  that  is  quite  so  dreadful  as  that  of 
the  man  who  has  no  faith  in  his  life  and  no  hope, 
who  has  never  met  anyone,  of  whom  he  was  not 
tempted  to  say,  "  What  is  he  after?  "  The  man 
who  has  never  seen  a  true  friend,  the  man  who  has 
never  learned  how  to  be  lovable,  but  is  now  grow- 
ing less  lovable  —  he  suffers  poverty.  So  far  as 
a  man  is  under  the  influence  of  such  material  and 
outward  conditions  as  bring  degradation,  sop  his 
manliness,  and  prevent  him  from  living  the  full  life 
of  a  man,  he  is  poor. 

The  problem  which  we  have  before  us  is,  how 
to  enrich  life,  and  as  incidental  to  this,  how  to 
bring  about  the  material  conditions,  whatever  they 
may  be,  favorable  to  a  man's  full  life.  I  am  will- 
ing to  take  any  theory,  socialist  or  anarchist  or 
whatever  you  please,  if  you  can  show  me  that  by 
using  that  theory  we  shall  enrich  human  life  in 
manhood  or  womanhood,  that  we  shall  give  people 
faith,  hope,  love,  the  joy  of  work,  the  joy  in 
beauty,  the  joy  of  honorable  companionship. 

Let  us  now  try  to  see  what  necessary  conditions 
there  are  which  we  all  might  agree  in  wishing  to 
bring  about.  On  this  point  we  have  to  preach  to 
some  of  our  friends  pure  opportunism.  There  are 
those  who  say  that  society  is  sick  and  they  want 
to  see  it  grow  from  bad  to  worse,  until  it  is  simply 
obliged  to  take  their  cure.  This  is  hardly  a  rea- 
sonable proposition,  even  from  their  point  of  view. 


A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM  111 

If  you  run  your  patient  down  so  low  that  he  has 
not  much  vitality  left,  even  your  brand  new  pan- 
acea may  not  succeed  in  curing  him.  It  seems  to 
me  that  everyone,  no  matter  what  his  theory  is, 
might  agree  in  such  measures  as  I  am  going  to 
set  forth  before  you;  inasmuch  as  the  kind  of 
radical  remedy  which  certain  people  assume  as  the 
only  one  is  not  possible  this  year  anyway,  and  is 
not  possible  probably  even  with  "  Boston  1915," 
or  perhaps  before  1920!  In  the  meantime  do  you 
not  want  to  do  something  besides  talk?  Do  you 
not  want  to  help  a  little  to  improve  conditions  so 
that  your  patient  may  be  able  to  stand  the  opera- 
tion when  it  comes? 

Let  us  begin  now  with  the  subject  of  alcoholic 
drinks.  There  is  a  good  subject  for  all  kinds  of 
kindly  people  who  have  the  interests  of  humanity 
at  heart  enough  to  be  willing  to  act  together. 
Everybody  agrees,  even  those  who  like  the  drink, 
that  a  billion  and  a  half  a  year  or  more  —  I  have 
seen  estimates  higher  than  this  —  is  rather  exces- 
sive for  that  particular  kind  of  dubious  expense. 
This  is  pretty  nearly,  I  suppose,  ten  per  cent,  of 
all  the  income  of  the  American  people  which  goes 
to  the  degradation  of  life.  You  may  say  that  the 
craving  for  the  alcoholic  drinks  arise  from  the 
peculiar  conditions  of  poverty.  Yes,  there  is  ac- 
tion and  reaction  from  drink  to  poverty  and  from 
poverty  to  drink,  but  I  suspect  that  the  use  of  the 
alcoholic  drink  comes  largely  because  we  are  bar- 
barians. It  is  the  barbarous  way  of  getting  ex- 


A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM 

citement  and  titillation.  I  suspect  if  you  raised 
people's  wages  twice  and  three  times,  as  long  as 
they  were  the  same  people  they  are  now,  they  would 
spend  a  good  deal  more  for  drink  than  they  do 
now.  I  do  not  see  any  reason  why  they  should  not. 
Here  is  one  way  in  which  we  need  a  great  deal  more 
of  efficient  cooperative  service  of  all  who  love  their 
kind. 

Do  not  let  anyone  say,  that,  if  we  gave  up  the 
alcoholic  drinks,  the  wages  of  the  workingmen 
would  be  measurably  cut  down.  I  do  not  believe 
there  is  the  slightest  evidence  in  favor  of  that. 
I  think  you  will  find  in  those  communities  where 
they  have  practically  got  rid  of  the  alcoholic 
drinks  among  large  bodies  of  workmen,  that  they 
are  better  paid  than  in  those  communities  where 
the  saloons  are  open.  We  are  delighted  that  the 
labor  unions  and  the  organizations  of  the  working 
men  generally  are  so  disposed  as  they  are  to-day 
to  put  the  ban  upon  alcoholic  drinks,  and  I  wish 
that  their  efforts  were  matched  by  the  efforts  of 
those  who  make  public  opinion  through  their  in- 
fluence and  their  education. 

Another  way  in  which  we  waste  the  life  blood 
of  the  nation  is  through  war  and  preparation  for 
war.  Let  us  stop  that.  Why  should  we  not?  I 
wish  I  had  time  to  talk  about  this  and  nothing  else. 
I  should  like  to  have  anyone  show  me  where  there 
is  any  danger  coming  to  the  American  nation,  even 
if  we  should  do  so  radical  a  thing  as  to  sink  every 
battleship  in  the  sea.  I  believe  it  could  be  easily 


A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM  113 

demonstrated  that  we  should  thus  be  positively 
safer  than  we  are  now.  Our  danger  now  is  that 
we  may  be  drawn  into  war  through  hasty  insolence 
on  the  part  of  some  naval  officer  or  diplomat,  or 
through  some  arrogant  message  of  a  President,  or 
through  the  "  cockiness,"  of  newspapers  relying 
on  the  number  of  our  battleships.  There  is 
enough  money  going  to  waste  under  the  Army  and 
Navy  Departments  to  double  the  efficiency  of  our 
education  all  through  the  United  States,  if  we  were 
able  to  turn  it  into  the  form  of  education.  Most 
people  say,  "  Oh,  war  always  has  been  in  the  world ; 
of  course  sometime  we  will  get  rid  of  it."  But 
why  should  we  not  say,  "  We  in  the  United  States 
propose  to  lead  the  world  in  getting  rid  of  it "? 

I  want  to  say  something  about  our  own  personal 
way  of  life.  We  who  are  living  on  salaries  have 
to  speak  modestly  here.  Suppose  we  go  out  like 
knight-errants  trying  to  better  conditions  in  the 
world,  and  at  home  our  own  fields  are  left  untilled 
and  the  people  who  are  nearest  to  us  are  left  unfed. 
This  is  like  what  we  do  if  we  go  out  to  preach 
the  Golden  Rule  in  the  corners  and  byways  of  the 
next  town,  while  we  do  not  trust  the  Golden  Rule 
in  our  own  profession  or  occupation.  It  is  funda- 
mental to  this  whole  business  of  civilization,  if 
we  believe  in  God  and  human  progress,  that  we 
try  the  remedy  of  all  the  idealists  —  I  mean  the 
Golden  Rule  —  wherever  we  are  working.  It  is 
curious  how  much  apathy  and  indifference  and 
skepticism  we  meet  among  people  who,  we  would 


114?  A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM 

suppose,  of  course  would  say,  "  We  will  do  this." 
One  of  the  dangers  of  those  who  are  trying  to  get 
progress  by  majority  votes  is  that  they  say, 
"  When  all  the  rest  do  right,  we  will  do  right,"- 
as  if  any  progress  had  ever  come  in  this  world, 
except  by  those  who  have  said,  "  We  will  do  right 
whether  any  others  do  so  or  not."  I  do  not  know 
what  profession  or  occupation  there  is  which  is 
worth  a  man's  engaging  in,  that  is  not  capable  of 
being  managed  on  the  principles  of  the  Golden 
Rule.  Is  there  any  decent  occupation  that  is  not 
a  department  of  social  service?  Every  kind  of 
business  is  social  service.  And  why  should  we  not 
trust  the  great,  deep  laws  of  social  service?  I 
believe  the  world  is  finding  this  out.  I  believe  there 
were  never  so  many  men  who  were  really  trying 
honestly  to  do  all  kinds  of  business  by  the  Golden 
Rule. 

Of  course,  when  we  leave  "  business  "  in  the  nar- 
row sense,  and  talk  about  the  practice  of  medicine 
and  the  higher  professions,  about  art,  about  teach- 
ing, about  all  those  numerous  occupations  in  which 
we  are  directly  servants  of  others,  nothing  else 
works  except  the  Golden  Rule.  You  do  not  want 
any  teacher  in  your  school  who  is  not  following 
his  profession  as  a  part  of  the  law  of  social  service. 
You  certainly  cannot  then  except  commercial  busi- 
ness from  that  great  human  law  that  covers 
all  things.  Let  us  believe  in  this,  let  us  at  least 
vow  that  we  will  die  in  these  tracks  if  we  must. 
I  think  Tolstoi  is  right,  that  if  anybody  has  any- 


A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM  115 

thing  useful  to  do,  that  man  will  not  be  allowed  to 
starve;  the  world  wants  him.  So  I  say,  let  us  be 
very  careful  at  the  start  that  we  try  hard  to  earn 
our  living,  especially  we  who  are  working  on  sal- 
aries, so  that  people  who  are  living  on  wages  shall 
not  be  allowed  to  say,  "  These  men  on  salaries  do 
not  earn  their  salt."  There  is  nothing  that  has 
been  such  a  terror  to  me  all  my  life  as  the  fear 
that  people  might  honestly  say  that. 

Moreover,  we  have  a  deal  to  do  about  education 
and  in  lifting  the  standard  of  education.  In  one 
respect  there  is  a  danger  that  threatens  our  age, 
something  like  that  which  threatened  the  age  in 
which  the  Roman  Empire  was  running  down. 
I  mean  the  large  number  of  people  whom  we 
have  in  America  who  have  been  trained  to  no 
efficiency,  whose  principal  idea  is  to  get  all  they 
can  and  to  give  as  little  as  they  can,  and  whose 
ideal  of  public  service  is  to  be  on  the  payroll. 
Our  schools  so  far  are  not  doing  very  much,  with 
all  our  civic  education,  to  train  up  a  generation 
who  see  what  civic  life  and  civic  service  really  are. 
It  is  painful  to  see  how  many  people,  who  ought  to 
know  better,  among  the  intelligent  business  men 
who  ought  to  be  responsible  for  the  good  govern- 
ment of  their  town,  are  not  willing  to  spend  one 
whole  day  in  a  year  for  pure  public  service. 

Now,  our  education  must  be  directed  toward 
the  training  of  efficient  wills.  The  Roman  Em- 
pire was  doing  many  things,  at  least  for  the  people 
of  Rome,  which  people  think  society  ought  to  take 


116  A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM 

charge  of  to-day.  It  was  feeding  people,  it  was 
giving  them  games  and  shows,  and  as  a  material 
civilization  it  was  thought  to  be  a  great  success. 
But  there  were  crowds  of  people  filling  the  city 
who  never  had  been  accustomed  to  think  of  doing 
the  slightest  thing  in  return  for  Rome.  There 
likewise  is  our  danger  to-day  —  the  want  of  effi- 
cient will.  In  many  cases  we  are  pauperizing  the 
wills  of  our  children  in  both  school  and  the  home 
by  doing  so  much  for  them  and  asking  so  little  in 
return.  The  mother  will  hardly  let  her  child  help 
her  wash  the  dishes. 

Moreover,  there  is  an  enormous  amount  of  pov- 
erty, as  the  Massachusetts  commission  found  in 
their  report  on  "  the  high  cost  of  living,"  in  the 
form  of  the  ill  health  of  the  people.  It  is  related, 
of  course,  to  bad  housing  conditions,  bad  hygienic 
conditions,  and  also  to  bad  moral  conditions.  The 
waste  by  disease  goes  high  and  low;  there  is  no 
stratum  of  society  which  is  exempt  from  it,  as  no 
stratum  of  society,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  has  any  more 
happiness  than  any  other  stratum.  I  do  not 
know  but  the  highest  and  lowest  classes  of  all  are 
the  nearest  together  in  having  the  least  real  satis- 
faction out  of  life.  Perhaps  they  are  the  nearest 
together  also  from  the  danger  of  suffering  from 
very  bad  physical  conditions,  one  from  not  having 
enough  and  the  other  from  having  more  than  is 
good  for  them,  absolutely  handicapping  their 
children  and  making  it  very  doubtful  whether 
their  children  ever  amount  to  anything.  Do  not 


A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM  117 

let  anybody  envy  them.  The  fact  is,  there  is  an 
enormous  amount  to  learn,  before  we  know  how 
to  cure  the  bad  physical  conditions  which  pauper- 
ize life. 

There  are  a  number  of  other  things  that  I  should 
like  to  speak  about.  For  instance,  the  conserva- 
tion of  our  natural  resources.  Everyone  ought 
to  be  interested  in  this.  Then  the  conservation 
of  the  workers.  We  are  learning  new  thoughts 
about  what  we  owe  to  the  men  who  are  always 
risking  their  lives  on  the  great  system  of  railways, 
or  in  the  mines,  and  are  often  brought  to  death 
for  our  sakes.  We  are  learning  that  we  are  all 
one  body  in  these  men's  sufferings,  and  that  we 
must  do  what  we  can  to  minimize  them. 

Again,  there  is  the  question  of  our  treatment  of 
the  so-called  criminal  class.  I  am  glad  there  is 
a  little  awakening  here  in  Massachusetts  on  that 
subject.  It  seems  to  me  that  in  a  large  way  we 
are  doing  almost  everything  that  we  ought  not  to 
do  and  omitting  to  do  largely  those  things  that  we 
ought  to  do.  Here  is  a  subject  in  which  anyone, 
especially  if  he  lives  near  a  county  jail  or  State 
Prison  or  court  house,  might  easily  interest  himself 
to  see  what  society  can  do  next  to  help  build  up 
the  sense  of  responsibility,  for  instance,  on  the 
part  of  the  judges.  If  the  judges  knew  that  they 
were  expected  to  do  their  very  best  for  this  class, 
they  would  readily  respond.  Now,  the  judges  are 
pretty  much  left  to  themselves,  and  I  hear  often 
of  careless,  inconsistent  and  inequitable  judgments 


118  A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM 

made,  all  for  want  of  more  public  spirit  on  the 
part  of  men  and  women  just  like  us  here. 

Then,  to  hurry  on,  I  think  that  one  of  the  most 
important  things,  without  which  we  shall  never 
get  the  great  cities  where  they  ought  to  be,  is 
some  general  comprehensive  measure  by  which  we 
shall  help  to  place  every  family,  especially  every 
family  of  children,  on  a  garden  spot.  I  do  not 
believe  that  you  can  ever  have  life  right  in  these 
cities  where  the  larger  part  of  the  people  are 
tenants,  and  living  without  any  touch  of  their 
children  with  the  soil.  I  believe  we  must  almost 
rebuild  our  cities.  We  must  rebuild  them  with 
fireproof  structures  one  of  these  days.  We  are 
spending  now  for  loss  by  fire  enough  to  do  it  and 
save  money.  We  are  most  careless  in  this  matter. 

What  I  want  to  speak  of  especially  is  the  need 
of  that  kind  of  housing  which  will  give  each  family 
some  sense  of  independence  and  some  sense  of 
having  a  stake  in  the  life  of  the  town.  You  who 
are  interested  in  the  churches  know  that  the  people 
who  are  mere  tenants,  moving  hither  and  thither 
at  will,  have  very  little  interest  in  the  churches, 
and  are  generally  very  poor  citizens.  Now,  at  the 
very  time  when  we  have  the  most  tremendous  needs 
for  civic  expense  and  are  going  into  debt  at 
such  a  rate  that  the  city  of  Boston  this  year  spends 
something  like  $7,000,000  for  its  interest  money 
and  its  sinking  fund  —  enough,  if  it  had  not  gone 
into  debt,  to  pay  as  it  goes  and  to  get  everything 
beautiful  and  necessary  that  it  wants  without  ever 


A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM  119 

going  into  debt  again  —  with  this  tremendous 
pressure  upon  us  of  debt  and  expense,  we  have  at 
our  hands  a  means  of  determining  and  of  providing 
all  the  expense  through  the  growing  wealth  that 
comes  unearned  by  anyone,  but  earned  by  all  the 
community  in  the  increasing  value  of  land.  They 
say  that  every  immigrant  and  every  baby  born  in 
the  city  of  New  York  adds  by  the  mere  increment 
of  the  mass  as  much  as  $750  to  the  land  values 
of  that  city.  We  are  doing  the  same  thing  every- 
where, increasing  the  land  values,  and  simply  let- 
ting this  great  sum  which  ought  to  go  for  every 
kind  of  civic  improvement,  go  into  the  hands  of 
the  landlords.  Of  course  we  recognize  the  fact 
that  the  landlords  in  many  cases  may  have  hon- 
estly earned  their  money  which  they  have  invested 
in  city  land  for  further  rise.  But  that  has  noth- 
ing to  do  with  the  great  question  of  equity  in- 
volved, that  this  increase  of  the  value  ought  ob- 
viously to  belong  —  everyone  who  looks  into  it 
must  recognize  that  —  to  the  whole  body  of  so- 
ciety which  makes  the  increment,  and  which  needs 
the  value  that  comes  from  the  increment.  And 
somehow,  even  if  we  have  to  carry  our  process  of 
adjusting  this  thing  through  a  number  of  years, 
sooner  or  later  we  must  contrive  to  bring  it  about ; 
and  then  we  can  do  all  kinds  of  beautiful  things. 
We  can  do  what  Mayor  Tom  Johnson  of  Cleve- 
land said  ought  to  be  done  in  every  city  —  make 
the  transportation  system  as  free  as  the  elevators 
are  in  a  great  building,  so  that  the  people  who  live 


120  A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM 

ten  miles  out  of  town  can  have  free  rides  back 
and  forth  to  their  work.  We  can  do  such  things 
as  are  called  for,  if  they  prove  to  be  for  the 
common  good,  when  first  we  do  the  one  thing  that 
is  just  and  right  about  the  city  lands. 

Here  is  a  pretty  programme  for  you.  But  what 
is  the  good  of  the  programme,  however  pretty, 
if  we  simply  look  upon  it,  as  we  so  often  do,  as  a 
fine  scheme,  and  that  is  all?  I  think  very  few 
of  us  have  any  idea  of  the  difference  between  the 
theory,  the  scheme,  the  ideal,  and  the  labor  cost 
of  bringing  the  thing  to  pass.  And  yet  we  all 
know  it  is  no  good  whatever,  except  as  a  genial 
recommendation,  unless  we  try  to  bring  it  to  pass. 
This  takes  us  back  again  to  the  solid  need  of  what 
we  who  believe  in  religion  think  religion  is  good 
for.  What  is,  deep  down,  the  real  use  of  a  man? 
To  put  it  in  another  form,  what  is  the  highest  form 
of  the  life  of  a  human  being?  Is  it  not  this,  that 
the  man  shall  be  able  with  all  his  senses,  and  his 
skill,  and  his  intelligence  and  his  moral  faculties 
and  his  integrity,  to  be  a  sort  of  channel  through 
which  the  good-will  of  the  universe  may  be  made 
to  show  itself  and  prevail?  Was  there  ever  a 
happy  human  life  that  was  not  in  some  sense  a 
medium  through  which  the  divine  goodness  was 
operative?  Was  there  ever  a  human  life  which 
was  a  failure  in  genuine  happiness,  no  matter  how 
full  of  suffering  that  life  was,  so  long  as  it  was  in 
some  degree  a  channel  through  which  devoted  kind- 
liness ran? 


A  SOCIAL  PROGRAM 

I  believe  that  we  must  preach  this  everywhere. 
We  must  preach  it  first  to  ourselves  —  we  must  see 
that  man's  life  is  not  worth  living  unless  it  is 
made  a  medium  for  devoted  kindliness.  And  then 
we  must  go  out  and  seek  to  do  all  kinds  of  things 
in  this  world,  whereby  these  conditions  shall  be 
made  to  prevail  through  which  every  human  life 
everywhere  shall  be  made  a  channel  for  the  devoted 
goodness  of  the  universe,  the  good-will  of  God,  to 
run  and  rule.  I  believe  the  world  needs  nothing 
so  much  as  that  we  shall  proclaim  through  the 
land,  that  we  live  in  a  divine  universe,  that  there 
is  a  living  God,  and  that  the  whole  enterprise  of 
life  is  simply  to  live  like  the  sons  and  daughters 
of  God. 


WHAT    SOME     CHURCHES    ARE    DOING 

REV.  P.  R.  FROTHINGHAM 
Minister,  Arlington  Street  Church,  Boston,  Mass. 

Whatever  I  have  to  say  will  be  interesting  only 
as  the  specific  is  of  value  in  contrast  with  the 
merely  speculative,  and  as  the  thing  that  is  being 
done  becomes  significant  when  set  over  against  the 
thing  that  is  being  talked  about.  I  am  not  here  to 
tell  all  that  our  church  is  doing,  that  would  be  a 
rather  large  contract.  I  simply  want  to  describe 
one  thing,  viz.,  the  work  of  our  tuberculosis  class. 

About  eight  years  ago  when  the  determined 
attack  against  tuberculosis  first  began,  some  of  the 
churches  came  forward  and  enquired  what  they 
could  do  to  help  in  the  fight.  It  was  a  Boston 
physician,  I  think,  a  specialist  in  the  work,  who 
indicated  this  line  of  action  as  one  that  they 
might  successfully  undertake.  It  was  in  response 
to  this  suggestion  that  .about  seven  years  ago  we 
in  the  Arlington  Street  church  organized  our  tu- 
berculosis class.  Let  me  explain  just  what  such 
a  class  stands  for  and  what  it  ought  to  accom- 
plish. 

A  great  many  people  in  our  communities  are 
attacked  by  this  terrible  disease  who  cannot  afford 
to  go  away  to  get  the  clear,  cold  air  and  the  out- 


WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING 

of-door  treatment  that  is  afforded  by  life  in  the 
Adirondacks  or  further  out,  as  in  Colorado.  The 
suggestion  therefore  was  made  that  the  poorer  tu- 
berculosis patients,  by  being  brought  together  and 
organized  into  little  groups,  might  be  instructed 
in  the  modern  methods  of  treating  this  trouble, 
and  by  meeting  together  and  comparing  notes 
would  be  encouraged  to  follow  out  the  regime  and 
to  submit  themselves  to  the  discipline  ordered  by 
the  physician. 

The  first  thing,  of  course,  is  to  get  a  good  phy- 
sician, and  that  nowadays  is  not  a  difficult  thing 
to  do.  I  am  always  impressed  by  the  amount  of 
service  that  our  doctors,  and  especially  our  young 
doctors,  are  willing  to  render.  They  are  intensely 
eager  in  many  instances  to  be  of  social  use.  It  is 
comparatively  easy,  therefore,  to  find  a  young 
physician  who  has  made  somewhat  of  a  specialty 
of  tuberculosis  who  is  willing  to  help.  With  him 
there  must  be  a  trained  nurse,  or  district  visitor. 

The  ideal  class  consists,  I  think,  of  something 
like  twenty-five  to  thirty  patients.  When  our 
class  was  first  organized,  I  remember  a  curious 
objection  that  was  made  to  it.  One  of  the  older 
members  of  the  church  came  to  me  in  some  distress 
and  remarked  that  she  was  afraid  she  would  never 
be  able  to  go  into  the  vestry  again.  I  said,  "  What 
is  the  matter  with  the  vestry  ?  "  "  Why,"  she  said, 
"  all  those  people  who  are  sick  with  consumption 
coming  in  there  —  I  don't  see  what  you  are  think- 
ing of."  And  it  was  only  with  difficulty  that  I 


WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING 

allayed  her  fears  by  assuring  her  that  the  tuber- 
culosis class  did  not  come  to  the  vestry  but  that 
it  met  in  a  room  connected  with  one  of  our  dis- 
pensaries. 

The  benefit  of  getting  people  together  who  are 
suffering  from  a  trouble  of  that  sort  lies,  I  think, 
in  the  fact  that  they  encourage  one  another.  That 
is  to  say,  a  good  patient  —  and  by  that  I  mean 
one  who  obeys  the  rules,  does  as  he  or  she  is  told  — 
sets  a  good  example  to  the  others  and  is  apt  to 
be  held  up  as  an  example.  Another  thing  also  is 
if  the  good  patient  has  been  in  the  class  two  or 
three  months  and  makes  continual  progress, —  it 
being  part  of  the  system  that  every  time  the  class 
meets,  once  a  week,  each  patient  is  examined  and 
weighed  and  the  record  of  weight  compared  with 
the  record  of  the  weight  of  the  week  before, —  it 
is  a  tremendous  stimulus  to  the  others  who  are 
pretty  sick  to  see  this  individual  going  steadily 
ahead.  Therefore  by  getting  this  group  together 
and  by  encouraging  them  to  see  and  study  one 
another's  cases,  there  is  inevitably  an  element  of 
competition  that  comes  in  to  stimulate  them.  In 
the  case  of  patients  who  are  distinctly  poor,  as  so 
often  happens,  or  who  become  suddenly  poor  be- 
ing obliged  to  give  up  their  work,  it  is  necessary 
to  give  assistance ;  and  the  money  is  used  chiefly 
to  supply  them  with  tents  and  blankets  and  gen- 
eral outdoor  equipment,  with  thermometers  by 
which  they  can  make  a  record  of  their  own  temper- 
ature, and  in  certain  cases  with  nourishing  food. 


WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING      125 

Now,  to  indicate  what  has  been  accomplished,  I 
wish  to  give  you  the  records  of  the  past  six  years 
of  this  class  in  the  Arlington  Street  church.  We 
have  had  one  hundred  and  three  patients.  Of 
these  one  hundred  and  three  we  had  last  spring 
direct  knowledge  of  ninety -nine;  and  of  these 
ninety-nine  patients,  many  of  whom  were  desper- 
ately ill  when  they  came  to  us,  only  twenty-four 
have  died.  Seventy-five,  or  seventy-five  per  cent, 
are  living;  sixteen  are  absolutely  cured,  twenty- 
four  have  had  the  disease  arrested,  thirty-one  are 
improved,  and  only  four  out  of  all  those  who  have 
lived  can  be  set  down  as  not  having  been  improved. 
Fifty-nine,  or  fifty-nine  per  cent.,  are  working  at 
the  present  time,  engaged  in  such  ordinary 
pursuits  as  dressmaking,  plumbing,  teaming,  night 
watchman  and  work  of  that  kind.  Of  course  it  is 
very  desirable,  and  we  try  in  every  way,  to  get  the 
discharged  patient  an  out-of-door  position.  The 
Elevated  Railway  has  been  very  helpful  in  that  it 
has  been  willing  to  take  our  men  patients  and  put 
them  on  to  out-of-door  work.  You  see  that  in 
connection  with  the  class  a  great  deal  of  the  ordi- 
nary work  of  the  Associated  Charities  is  absolutely 
necessary,  and  our  committee  of  the  church,  con- 
sisting of  eight  or  ten  members,  is  oftentimes 
kept  busy  trying  to  get  positions  for  these  people 
who  have  been  restored  to  health  and  are  ready  to 
begin  again  the  great  struggle  for  self-support. 

In  regard  to  expense,  our  class,  ranging  from 
twenty  to  thirty  members  —  last  year  it  was  the 


126      WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING 

largest  that  it  had  been  at  all  and  numbered  thirty- 
seven —  has  cost  on  an  average  about  $1,100  a 
year,  which  means  a  cost  per  patient  of  $66  per 
year,  or  a  cost  per  month  of  about  $5.50.  I 
think  you  will  agree,  taking  into  account  the  fig- 
ures I  have  read,  that  the  cost  of  setting  a  person 
on  his  or  her  feet  again  after  an  attack  of  this 
dread  disease,  a  cost  of  only  $66  a  year,  is  a  very 
moderate  expense  in  this  day  of  high  cost  of  liv- 
ing. I  believe,  therefore,  that  the  work  is  one  of 
the  most  beneficent  and  fruitful  that  can  be  un- 
dertaken. We  are  proving  to  these  patients  that 
it  is  not  necessary  to  go  to  the  Adirondacks  nor 
to  Colorado,  but  if  they  are  willing  to  live  and 
sleep  in  the  open  air  and  obey  our  rules,  that  we 
can  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  send  them  out 
healthy  and  self-supporting  people. 


WHAT    SOME    CHURCHES    ARE    DOING 
REV.  EDWIN  ALFRED  RUMBALL 

Minister,  First  Unitarian  Congregational  Society, 
Rochester,  N.  Y. 

When  I  was  asked  to  give  this  address,  I 
replied  that  I  would  like  to  add  a  word  about 
some  of  the  things  we  want  to  do  as  well  as  of 
what  we  are  doing;  but  as  I  thought  about  the 
topic  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  ought  to  add  some- 
thing concerning  what  was  done  before  I  went  to 
Rochester,  which  has  made  the  work  since  accom- 
plished so  much  easier.  I  doubt  whether  the 
Rochester  Church  would  be  doing  much  Social 
Service  work  to-day  had  it  not  been  for  the  splen- 
did service  which  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Gannett  put  in 
there  during  the  twenty  years  previous. 

I  should  be  well  within  the  bounds  of  extreme 
statement  if  I  said  that  when  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Gannett 
came  to  the  city  in  1889  a  new  social  era  began. 
The  good  works  did  not  all  begin  as  Unitarian 
works,  for  they  had  the  quiet  modest  way  of  going 
behind  the  scenes  of  action  to  help,  sometimes  with 
little  gifts  of  money,  but  most  often  and  best  of 
all  by  putting  into  them  character  and  strength. 

When  I  came  to  Rochester  some  five  years  ago 

I  found  a  church  which  had  fed  on  the  fruit  of 
127 


128      WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING 

one  of  the  richest  of  spiritual  experiences,  and 
not  only  was  this  finding  expression  in  many  ways 
in  the  community,  but  there  was  plenty  of  instru- 
mentality for  wider  and  larger  work.  I  would 
like  at  the  outset  to  indicate  a  few  of  the  big 
things  which  began  during  the  twenty  years  of 
their  ministry. 

It  is  part  of  the  record  of  Dr.  Gannett's  first 
year  in  the  city  that  the  Rochester  Boys'  Evening 
Home  was  founded.  With  the  cooperation  of 
many  citizens  whom  he  had  interested  in  the  pro- 
ject, this  work  was  started.  To-day  it  is  the  oldest 
Boys'  Club  in  the  city  and  recently  I  made  a 
calculation  which  showed  that  over  twenty-five 
hundred  different  boys  had  come  directly  under  its 
influence.  I  should  like  to  take  time  to  read  some 
of  the  letters  of  old  boys  which  I  have  testifying 
to  the  good  which  they  had  received  from  the 
Home.  We  hear  from  time  to  time  of  how  this 
boy  and  that  boy  is  making  good.  Two  or  three 
of  them  are  Rabbis,  some  few  are  teaching  in  col- 
leges and  schools,  and  most  are  going  the  everyday 
paths  nobler  men  for  having  during  four  or  five 
years  of  their  boyhood  met  some  of  the  noblest. 
Of  course  they  heard  good  stories  there,  and  there 
learned  carpentry,  basketry,  and  how  to  wrestle 
and  play  games  with  fairness,  but  they  came,  too, 
into  close  contact  with  helpers  and  teachers  whose 
lives  still  give  concreteness  to  their  ideals  of  un- 
selfish service  and  brotherhood. 

During   this    same   previous   period   there  was 


started  what  we  have  come  to  call  the  Neighbor- 
hood Friendly.  This  was  first  of  all  a  Saturday 
morning  school  for  girls  to  learn  domestic  science. 
Here  the  children  of  the  poorer  homes  and  the 
tenements  near  the  church  have  learned  to  make 
their  own  clothes  and  the  clothes  of  their  younger 
sisters,  and  also  some  of  the  secrets  of  cooking, 
with  relaxations  in  folk-dancing  and  story-telling. 
The  interesting  feature  about  our  constituency 
is  that  while  most  of  our  boys  come  from  Jewish 
homes,  most  of  our  girls  come  from  Catholic 
homes.  If  any  question  of  religion  ever  arises, 
and  it  seldom  if  ever  does,  we  follow  the  policy 
of  advising  loyalty  to  their  own  traditions.  There 
are  other  good  things  which  might  be  told 
of  the  twenty  years  preceding  our  coming 
to  Rochester  which  might  be  learned  from 
and  proudly  told  by  our  workers  who  have  served 
under  both  "  administrations."  Not  the  least 
of  such  stories  would  be  of  the  beginnings  of 
Rochester's  two  social  settlements,  one  in  the  Jew- 
ish quarter  and  one  in  the  Italian  quarter,  both 
of  which  more  or  less  directly  were  fanned  into  a 
flame  of  life  by  Unitarian  hands  within  that  really 
wonderful  twenty  years.  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Gannett 
not  only  regenerated  human  lives  but  wherever 
these  regenerated  human  lives  went  they  brought 
about  still  further  social  regeneration.  I  do  not 
think  that  I  can  ever  come  to  the  dogmatic  opin- 
ion that  a  changed  environment  is  the  only  thing 
needful  for  the  regeneration  of  society,  because 


130      WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING 

that  doctrine  is  contradicted  all  the  time  in  my 
city  by  the  men  and  women,  poor  and  rich,  who  are 
serving  the  highest  ideals,  whose  consecration  first 
began  in  the  church  or  home  of  this  faithful  min- 
ister and  his  wife. 

How  as  to  the  present  activities  of  the  church 
and  the  Social  Service  plant  from  which  we  work. 
The  Boys'  Evening  Home  is  still  busy  and  as  large 
or  larger  than  ever.  Last  year  we  had  three  hun- 
dred and  thirty-six  different  boys  in  the  club. 
They  are  still  largely  Jewish  boys,  which  has  led 
some  to  feel  there  is  danger  of  the  home  becoming 
less  efficient  for  the  needs  of  our  community.  For 
it  is  not  the  Jewish  boy  to-day,  as  it  was  years  ago, 
who  most  needs  us;  it  is  the  Italian,  Greek  and 
Polish  boy  who  needs  us  most,  and  one  of  the  great 
things  we  have  before  us  is  to  obtain  this  larger 
efficiency.  Last  winter  we  had  a  number  of  Italian 
and  Irish  boys  and  it  was  very  interesting  to  see 
the  race  differences  and  the  harder  task  which  non- 
Jewish  boys  may  have  in  store  for  us.  The 
Neighborhood  Friendly  is  also  doing  well  and  each 
year  scores  of  garments  are  made  by  the  girls. 

The  new  thing  about  our  work,  if  it  can  be  said 
to  have  anything  really  new,  is  our  deeper  sense 
of  a  neighborhood  task.  We  are  coming  to  look 
at  our  work,  whether  for  boys  or  girls  or  mothers 
or  fathers  as  a  unit  and  not  as  a  number  of  sep- 
arate philanthropies.  This  began  about  three 
years  ago  when  we  added  a  new  building  to  our 
well-used  parish  house  and  made  its  capacity 


WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING      131 

about  three  times  that  of  the  old  one.  This  Gan- 
nett House,  as  we  call  it,  gives  us  a  fine  plant  for 
all  our  social  activities.  The  auditorium  will  seat 
about  three  hundred  people  and  its  floor  is  praised 
by  the  neighborhood  young  men  and  women  as  ex- 
cellent for  dancing.  Numerous  class-rooms  up- 
stairs and  downstairs  take  care  of  the  clay-model- 
ing, basketry,  carpentry  and  other  lessons  which 
we  teach.  Our  gymnasium  is  not  as  large  as  the 
auditorium  but  is  well  used,  and  while  the  church 
may  not  be  open  throughout  the  week,  we  could 
say  that  Gannett  House  is  hardly  ever  closed. 

This  neighborhood  task  became  more  conscious 
with  us  about  two  years  ago  when  we  made  a  small 
social  survey  of  the  ward  in  the  middle  of  which 
our  church  stands.  We  had  a  rough  idea  of  the 
needs  of  the  community  but  none  had  ever  tried 
to  find  out  the  full  problem  which  faced  us,  and 
just  how  many-sided  it  was.  We  did  not  know 
what  other  agencies  were  there  to  meet  the  need 
besides  ourselves.  So  two  years  ago,  I  gave  up 
half  of  my  vacation  and  made  a  survey  of  the  social 
needs  of  the  ward,  especially  in  reference  to  the 
children  and  the  question  of  housing.  After  hav- 
ing personally  made  about  a  thousand  calls  and 
obtaining  reports  from  three  others  who  made 
some  five  hundred  calls  between  them,  we  found 
that  our  ward  was  most  dense  in  population  of 
all  the  down-town  wards  of  Rochester,  having  in 
one  place  a  population  of  sixty-three  to  the  acre, 
which  holds  the  rank  of  third  in  the  most  dense 


WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING 

sections  of  the  entire  city.  We  found  forty  sa- 
loons to  seven  churches.  We  found  there  were 
five  hundred  and  fifty  children  in  the  ward  of  whom 
two  hundred  were  under  five  years  of  age.  We 
found  that  half  of  those  over  five  had  lost  during 
the  previous  school  session  over  two  thousand  days 
in  sickness,  and  when  we  came  to  look  for  the  rea- 
son we  found  that  over  two  hundred  of  the  children 
lived  in  tenements  and  yardless  flats  with  nowhere 
but  the  street  for  play.  We  found  one  hundred 
and  four  homes  wholly  supported  by  women,  and 
fifty  regular  recipients  of  charity  in  this  really 
small  area.  We  found  that  nearly  all  the  homes 
were  rented  and  but  very  few  owned  by  the  occu- 
pants. Three  hundred  families  were  living  in 
tenements  and  apartments,  fifteen  hundred  in 
rooms  and  some  score  or  more  in  little  houses  or 
shacks  built  in  the  gardens  of  other  homes.  We 
found  that  we  could  not  blame  the  incoming  im- 
migrant, for  with  the  exception  of  some  eight  per 
cent.,  all  were  poor  Americans,  and  most  of  the 
eight  per  cent,  had  been  here  long  enough  to  be 
classed  with  the  same.  Our  own  church  had  only 
four  families  in  the  entire  ward,  so  you  will  see 
that  our  work  for  the  ward  cannot  be  classed  as 
pastoral  so  much  as  outside  social  work.* 

In  making  the  investigation  we  found  all  kinds 

*  The  Survey  was  printed  in  an  illustrated  thirty-two 
page  pamphlet,  which  can  be  obtained  from  the  Depart- 
ment of  Social  and  Public  Service,  25  Beacon  Street,  Bos- 
ton, Mass. 


WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING      133 

of  evil  conditions  and  among  other  things  houses  of 
ill-fame.  These  we  reported  and  had  the  pleasure 
three  days  after  of  seeing  the  places  cleaned  up  by 
the  police.  Our  two  hundred  children  without  a 
playground  were  the  next  for  whom  we  worked. 
After  obtaining  signatures  to  a  petition,  we  had 
a  number  of  the  children  carry  the  petition,  twenty 
feet  long,  to  the  Mayor,  and  the  playground  was 
granted  and  there  is  hope  that  a  larger  one  will 
some  day  be  added.  Having  found  that  such  a 
large  number  of  the  children  in  the  ward  were 
sick  so  frequently,  and  feeling  that  the  reason  for 
it  all  might  be  met  by  a  school  nurse,  we  have  be- 
gun work  to  secure  such  help  and  by  the  time  I 
get  home  I  expect  to  find  that  that  nurse  has  been 
appointed  by  the  city. 

Then  there  were  larger  and  harder  problems. 
Nearby  were  two  of  the  most  popular  dancing 
halls  in  the  city,  and  both  of  them  were  upstairs 
over  saloons.  We  felt  that  it  was  a  church  duty 
to  open  a  dance  hall  to  compete  with  these  places, 
so  to-day  I  hold  a  city  license  to  conduct  a  dance 
hall  in  the  city  of  Rochester,  probably  the  only 
Unitarian  minister  who  is  also  a  licensed  dance 
hall  keeper.  The  young  men  and  women  who  come 
pay  a  little  below  the  regular  prices  at  the  other 
places  and  we  have  our  hall  under  the  supervision 
of  one  of  the  very  best  dancing  teachers  in  the 
city.  So  far,  the  expense  of  teachers  and  pianists 
has  been  met  from  the  income  from  entrance  fees. 
The  girls  are  mostly  from  factories  and  stores 


134      WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING 

and  in  great  need  of  such  opportunities  for  their 
leisure  time.  They  have  very  little  in  their  homes 
to  attract  them  at  night,  so  by  opening  our  doors 
and  making  them  welcome  they  have  their  recre- 
ation under  very  much  better  auspices  than  they 
could  have  at  the  commercialized  amusements. 

In  the  summer  time  when  the  church  is  closed 
and  most  of  the  social  activities  are  suspended,  we 
do  something  else.  Last  year  for  the  first  time 
one  of  our  workers  was  able  to  take  some  of  the 
working  girls  most  needing  it  to  the  Thousand 
Islands  for  a  few  weeks.  Such  a  treat  may  not 
happen  again  and  yet  it  may.  We  had  found  that 
in  the  tenements  surrounding  the  church  many 
of  the  mothers  had  no  bathroom  where  they  could 
bathe  their  smaller  children,  so  we  offered  our 
tub  at  Gannett  House  and  the  help  of  a  worker, 
and  all  through  the  summer  once  every  week  the 
water  was  kept  hot,  and  at  the  rate  of  twenty-three 
a  day  the  little  babies  were  washed  either  by  the 
worker  or  the  mother.  We  used  to  have  this 
washing  on  Saturday  until  we  found  that  it  was  a 
sin  for  some  of  our  little  Jewish  girls  to  do  such 
a  thing.  "  Why,  mother  would  not  wash  her  face 
on  Saturday,"  said  one  little  one  and  so  we  changed 
the  day  to  Friday. 

But,  as  all  in  this  kind  of  work  know  too  well, 
neighborhood  problems  are  also  city  and  social 
problems  and  cannot  be  met  by  dealing  only  with 
the  neighborhood.  To  make  one  ward  what  it 
ought  to  be,  we  must  lift  all  wards.  Just  what 


WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING      135 

part  the  Rochester  Church  is  playing  in  this 
larger  work,  we  will  indicate  in  closing.  Some  of 
the  great  social  problems  most  to  the  front  at  this 
time  in  Rochester  gather  about  the  housing,  milk 
and  recreation  questions.  We  have  no  Men's  Club 
in  the  church,  but  the  minister  and  a  number  of  the 
men  of  the  congregation  are  prominent  in  the  life 
of  the  City  Club,  which  is  one  of  the  most  vital 
public  opinionrmaking  forces  in  the  city.  The 
great  needs  of  the  city  are  very  frankly  discussed 
by  the  men  of  this  club  which  usually  averages 
a  membership  of  four  hundred  and  more,  and  has  an 
average  attendance  of  nearly  half  the  membership 
each  week.  Most  of  the  well-known  speakers 
whom  Mr.  Wiers  says  he  has  had  in  Montclair, 
we  have  enjoyed  listening  to  at  the  City  Club. 
We  feel  there  is  a  certain  advantage  in  sharing 
these  good  things  with  Baptist  and  Presbyterian, 
Episcopalian  and  Methodist  men,  instead  of  try- 
ing to  enjoy  them  only  as  Unitarians.  If  the  men 
of  Rochester  have  any  interest  in  housing  reform, 
milk  purity  or  any  other  vital  question  of  the  day, 
—  and  they  have  such  an  interest, —  it  is  largely 
because  of  the  City  Club  discussions.  The  Fourth 
of  July  Welcome-Feast  to  our  Immigrant  Citizens 
which  has  now  been  heard  of  all  over  the  country 
was  started  by  the  City  Club,  and  the  Unitarian 
minister  has  always  been  a  member  of  or  chairman 
of  the  Committee  of  Welcome. 

In   addition   to  the  quota  which   as   individual 
church  members  we  have  been  able  to  give  to  the 


136      WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING 

city  social  progress,  I  have  been  asked  to  say  a 
word  about  the  magazine  which  I  edit  in  the  city 
which  has  for  its  object  the  civic  and  social  wel- 
fare of  the  people  of  Rochester.  I  should  prefer 
speaking  of  this  in  an  impersonal  way  if  I  could, 
but  for  the  last  few  years  the  work  has  largely 
come  upon  me.  Associated  with  me  is  a  physician 
who  is  an  elder  in  one  of  the  large  Presbyterian 
churches  and  an  advertising  man,  who  acts  as 
Secretary  and  Treasurer  of  the  Common  Good 
Publishing  Company  of  which  I  am  now  the  Pres- 
ident. The  charter  of  our  incorporation  will  per- 
mit us  to  do  any  kind  of  publishing  and  book 
business  work,  but  apart  from  the  publishing  of 
the  "  Fourth  Ward  Survey,"  we  have  done  only 
the  work  attached  to  the  monthly  appearance  of 
our  little  magazine,  called  The  Common  Good. 
It  costs  about  $100  a  month  to  run  it,  which  we 
obtain  from  advertisements  and  subscriptions  and 
a  little  outside  help.  Our  circulation  is  one  thou- 
sand copies  a  month.  In  this  magazine  which  is 
about  the  size  of  "  The  Survey,"  having  regularly 
thirty-two  pages,  well  illustrated,  we  print  articles 
on  local,  social  and  civic  conditions.  What  "  The 
Survey  "  is  to  the  country,  we  try  to  be  to  our  own 
city.  We  find  that  there  is  often  material  which 
the  press  of  the  city  cannot  print,  or  are  unwilling 
for  a  multitude  of  reasons  to  print,  which  makes 
a  good  "  scoop  "  for  The  Common  Good.  With- 
out fear  or  favor,  but  with  care  to  have  the  facts, 
we  report  on  investigations  made  and  blaze  the 


WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING      137 

way  for  most  of  the  at  present  unrealized  civic 
ideals  of  community  life.  Last  summer  our 
magazine  led  the  fight  against  the  erection  of  a 
huge  tenement  in  the  city  and  with  the  cooperation 
of  many  others  and  the  opposition  of  all  the  daily 
papers,  we  saw  our  efforts  rewarded,  and  the 
tenement  is  not  to  be  built.  At  the  present  time 
we  are  in  a  campaign  for  pure  milk  and  the 
magazine  took  all  the  dealers  by  surprise  one 
month  by  printing  their  bacteria  records  for  the 
public  to  read.  This  was  a  daring  thing  and  some 
dealers  lost  customers  because  of  our  daring,  but 
by  turning  publicity  on  their  work  we  have  already 
seen  an  improvement  in  the  milk.  We  shall  con- 
tinue to  print  these  records,  unless  we  can  get  the 
city  to  enforce  their  publicity,  until  we  can  insure 
a  better  milk  supply  for  the  children.  Even  the 
press  of  the  city  has  recognized  our  work  in  this 
direction  and  one  of  the  evening  papers  began  to 
make  the  dealers  more  fearful  by  saying,  "  If 
you  want  to  find  out  about  your  milkman,  read 
The  Common  Good"  With  such  an  organ  of 
publicity  in  our  hands  we  can  afford  to  be  less 
dependent  on  the  local  press  and  bring  to  public 
attention  many  things  that  otherwise  might  be 
hidden.  Its  circulation  is  almost  wholly  in  the 
best  and  most  influential  homes  in  the  city. 

Finally,  let  me  say  a  word  about  the  principles 
which  are  guiding  us  in  all  the  social  service  work 
of  the  church.  From  beginning  to  end  our  work 
is  undenominational.  We  keep  the  Unitarian 


name  out  of  it.  I  think  that  I  am  right  in  saying 
that  in  all  the  twenty  years  work  with  our  boys, 
never  one  has  joined  our  church,  and,  contrary  to 
some  churches,  we  are  rather  proud  of  the  fact. 
By  it  we  have  increased  confidence  in  all  our  work 
among  all  classes  of  people  in  the  city.  They 
have  come  to  believe  in  our  honesty  of  purpose 
and  in  the  sincerity  of  our  social  aim.  If  there 
is  any  glory  to  reap  we  would  rather  not  reap  it 
as  a  church,  for  so  many  others  have  worked  and 
helped  with  us  that  we  would  rather  leave  alone 
what  is  so  hard  to  apportion  justly.  I  would  like 
to  emphasize  this,  because  I  have  heard  even  among 
Unitarians  the  emphasis  on  the  opposite  policy. 
Are  we  primarily  doing  this  social  work  to  make 
our  churches  stronger  or  to  serve  the  humanity 
of  our  communities?  Is  it  to  be  unselfish  service 
or  bait  for  church  membership?  We  are  trying 
in  Rochester  to  take  what  we  conceive  to  be  the 
higher  of  these  alternatives.  For  example,  I 
hope  that  in  a  few  years,  we  shall  not  have  a 
dancing  hall  at  Gannett  House.  If  there  has  been 
any  real  success  in  our  work  in  the  city  for  the 
common  good,  we  ought  to  have  by  that  time  trans- 
ferred such  activities  to  the  school  house.  It  must 
be  community,  not  church  work  eventually,  and  all 
our  efforts  should  have  that  end  in  mind.  I  hope 
that  one  of  these  days, —  it  will  not  be  within  five 
years, —  we  can  shut  Gannett  House  entirely  so 
far  as  the  kind  of  social  activities  are  concerned 
that  we  have  there  now,  and  go  on  to  other  pioneer 


WHAT  CHURCHES  ARE  DOING      139 

work  which  will  be  waiting  as  vision  for  new 
toilers  in  that  day.  These  reforms,  these  charities, 
if  they  are  worth  while  and  to  be  permanent,  must 
be  the  organized  friendliness  of  the  community. 
The  church  must  live  for  the  future  and  other 
institutions.  It  must  die  to  live.  That  principle 
remains  always  true  for  the  church ;  it  was  true  in 
the  beginning,  it  will  be  true  in  the  fiftieth  century 
just  as  much  as  in  the  first:  dying  to  live  is  the 
highest  service  of  God. 


HH 

31 


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